[Prognostic factors of success in renal transplantation]

From January 1984 to January 1989, 139 kidneys were retrieved from 74 brain dead donors in our institution. The transplantation was performed either locally (79), or in an other French institution (40). The five year actuarial survival rate, for the 139 kidneys retrieved in Montpellier, was 65 percent. Many factors about the donor, the retrieval and the recipient, which may affect the graft survival, were entered in a Cox multivariate analysis. The minimal follow up duration was 18 months. The risk factors studied included: donor parameters (age, sex, cause of death, haemodynamic parameters and renal function); retrieval parameters (kidney alone or multiorgan harvesting, discoloration and renal perfusion quality); organ characteristics (multiple arteries and cold ischemia time); recipients parameters (age, sex, prior transplantation, local transplantation or not, and HLA matching). A first multivariate analysis included only pretransplant risk factors. The risk factors for graft loss, as identified by the Cox model, were in the order: donor's age (P = 0.03), arterial pressure (P = 0.01), prior transplantation of the recipient (P = 0.01) and kidney discoloration quality during the retrieval (P = 0.008). Early post transplant parameters were included within this Cox model (poor early renal function, need for dialysis, serum creatinine level at one week). The need for dialysis therefore was identified as the main predictive value (P = 0.002). The 4 other risk factors, selectioned in the first model, always remained significant.