Survey of renal transplantation in Slovenia

This brief survey presents data on renal transplantation in Slovenia, a country with a population of 2 million, which has one renal transplant center. The establishment of an appropriate national transplantation organization resulted in an increase in transplantations and the acceptance of Slovenia into Eurotransplant (ET) at the beginning of 2000. Current immunosuppression is composed of cyclosporine microemulsion (Neoral), mycophenolate mofetil, methylprednisolone, and anti-interleukin-2 receptor monoclonal antibodies. By the end of 2008, 766 renal transplantations had been performed, and from 1970 to 2007, 125 patients had been transplanted from living related donors. From 1986 to 1999, 239 patients received renal grafts from deceased donors. From 2000 to 2008, 402 patients were transplanted from deceased donors. In 2004, 55 renal transplantations were done. Two hundred and twenty-eight (56.7%) renal grafts were shipped from other ET countries. The HLA-antigen mismatch of 2.7 +/- 1.1 was not significantly different to that before 2000. From 2000 to 2008, the one- and five-year patient survival rates were 98.2% and 95.2%, respectively. The concomitant graft survival rates were 94.4% and 90.9%, respectively. In the ET era, the number of deceased donor renal transplants per year was 2.6 times higher than in the 14 years before. In 2004 we reached the average number of deceased donor renal transplants per million population of ET. Short- and medium-term results of the last nine-year period have been very good and entirely comparable to those in large reports.