Limitations of glomerular filtration rate equations in the renal transplant patient

This study aims to compare the performance of endogenous creatinine clearance (CL(cr)) and a number of published mathematical equations to calculate glomerular filtration rate (GFR) in renal transplant patients considering (99m)Tc DTPA isotope scan as the reference method. A total of 152 GFR were performed on 81 renal transplant patients. Accuracy of each method was measured at different percentiles. The bias and precision of all the methods were then compared. A paired t-test was used to compare the performance of each calculation to the respective GFR measured by isotope study performed on the same day. In the total population, all calculated methods correlated significantly with the isotope results. Accuracies within specific ranges of the isotope GFR were limited in all equations (agreement with isotope result /= 50 mL/min and Gates in patients with GFR < 50 mL/min. Salazar (D.E. Salazar and G.B. Corcoran, Am J Med 1988; vol. 84: p. 1053) had the least bias in patients with BMI above 30 kg/m(2) and the Davis equation (G.A. Davis and M.H. Chandler, Am J Health Syst Pharm 1996; vol. 53: p. 1028) in patients with BMI <25 kg/m(2). In all analyses, Nankivell (B.J. Nankivell, S.M. Gruenwald, R.D.M. Allen and J.R. Chapman, Transplantation 1995; vol. 59: p. 1683) overestimated GFR by more than 80% and MDRD 1 and 2 in <10% of the time. The results demonstrate the inherited limitation in the currently available equations to calculate GFR in renal transplant patients.