B.C.'s investment in the implementation of these deceased donation strategies has led to a 150% increase in referrals of potential donors from hospitals between 2013 and 2017. B.C.'s deceased donor rate has increased by 81% from 67 donors in 2013 to 121 donors in 2017. The year 2017 was a record in B.C. for the number of donors, a year in which a record 479 lives were saved through transplants.
Our province is now one of the leaders in Canada for deceased donation. I have to acknowledge that this success is the result of the collaborative efforts of an interdisciplinary team of health professionals. Advancing organ donation is only possible with the team effort, commitment, and skill of many highly trained professional physicians and specialists.
Before I conclude I want to note that, while our focus today has been on deceased donation, we also have a strong clinical infrastructure for living donation, which has made B.C. one of the leaders in Canada. Living-donor kidney transplants represent the greatest potential growth area for better access to transplant for patients on the kidney wait-list. The success of B.C.'s program is due in part to the development of a fast-track assessment process to screen potential donors, participation in the national kidney paired exchange program, and the highly sensitized patient registry managed by Canadian Blood Services.
There's always more progress to be made for both deceased and living donation. We are working to ensure we do not miss British Columbians who would have wished to be donors, by developing a comprehensive and robust medical record review process together with our partner hospitals providing audit and feedback. New technologies also present opportunity for improvement, including ex vivo lung perfusion, which we are exploring in B.C. We also have ongoing initiatives to increase living kidney donation, and particularly pre-emptive living kidney transplant.
Thank you very much for taking the time to listen to our input today.