[Impact of smoking on kidney transplantation outcomes]

To investigate the impact of smoking on kidney transplantation outcomes.

The materials of 350 patients (including 229 (65.4%) men aged 37.1±0.6 years) who had undergone kidney allotransplantation (KAT) for end-stage renal disease were analyzed. The main outcomes of KAT (patient status (alive or dead); renal allograft (RAG) function or dysfunction; development of chronic transplant nephropathy (CTN)), were studied.

There were 52 (14.8%) smoking patients (50 (96.2%) men and 2 (3.8%) women). The survival rate of smokers after KAT was significantly lower (p=0.043), as was the duration of graft function in the smoking patients (p=0.038). There were statistically significant associations of smoking with age, sex, time to normalize post-KAT serum creatinine concentrations, the development of CTN and graft rejection crises, postoperative hypertension, post-KAT serum creatinine, hemoglobin, and albumin levels, pretransplantation alanine aminotransferase concentrations, pre-KAT left ventricular hypertrophy, patient compliance with the prescribed treatment regimen, the presence or absence of a job in the patient after KAT (p<0.05). The investigators built models for predicting the outcome of KAT for a patient's life and the development of CTN from preoperative patient risk factors, as well as a model of a RAG outcome from the factors of the pre-transplantation period and those seen one year after KAT. The impact of smoking on outcomes of KAT was revealed in all models along with other predictors.

Smoking is an important predictor of kidney transplantation outcome for both patients' lives and RAG function.