BACKGROUND: Few studies have evaluated patient characteristics and the hospital stay associated with living donor transplantations. Furthermore, little is known regarding living donor mortality, although previous reports have indicated that LDKTs have an estimated donor mortality of 0.03%, while the estimated mortality rate for LDLTs is 0.2-0.4%. OBJECTIVES: To provide insight on demographic characteristics, mortality, and hospital stay of living kidney and liver transplant patients. METHODS: The National Inpatient Sample (NIS) Core Dataset 2012 was used for the study. The measures evaluated in this study included gender, age, comorbidities, mortality rate, hospital charges, length of stay and hospital location. Kidney and liver donors were identified using ICD-9 diagnosis codes, V59.4 and V59.6 for kidney and liver donors, respectively. RESULTS: The proportion of LDKT and LDLT patients in the population were 0.014% and 0.0007%, respectively, of 7,296,968 discharges. Mortality rate for liver donors was 15.09%, while the mortality rate for kidney donors was 0.49%. COPD was found in 5.55% and 3.89% of kidney and liver donors, respectively, while mild liver disease, cerebrovascular disease and myocardial infarction was present in 0.19%, 0.00%, and 0.00% of liver donors, respectively (vs. 3.7%, 1.85%, and 1.85% of kidney donors). The average hospital charge for liver donors was $91,438 and 48,994 for kidney donors. Most donors (both liver and kidney) were found to be from large metropolitan cities. CONCLUSIONS: Our study highlighted important characteristics of living donor liver and kidney transplant patients, including common comorbidities, mortality rates, length of stay and hospital charges associated with each living donor type. Of importance, is that the current study found a much higher rate of mortality for LDKTs than what previous reports have indicated. Future studies should elucidate on these findings and further determine differences between living donor patients.