High anti-A titres may not preclude ABO-incompatible renal transplantation: an autoantibody could be the culprit

ABO-incompatible live donor renal transplantation is a growing field. To avoid hyperacute rejection, pre-operative ABO antibody titres should be < 8. There are a number of therapeutic measures used to reduce these titres if they are high. This case report describes a patient initially found to have an extremely high anti-A IgG titre (512). The high titre results were concomitant with a positive atypical antibody screen, which showed no specificity on identification. A strategy to assess true titre levels and remove sub-clinical autoantibodies was devised, leading to successful transplantation.