Living Donor in Renal Transplantation: Minimizing Risks

In recent years, the broadening of indications for renal transplantation, together with the progressive reduction of donations following brain stem death, has led to living donation being considered in increasing numbers of cases for renal transplantation. To investigate this further, it is necessary to assess the impact it has on the postoperative outcomes in the intensive care unit (ICU). Our group conducted a retrospective, observational, single-center study from 2013 to 2016 to evaluate differences in outcomes between living and cadaveric kidney donation both during ICU admission and total hospitalization. We compared differences in characteristics between living and deceased graft recipients including demographics, comorbidities, analytical data, radioisotope imaging test results, complications, ICU and hospital ward length of stay, and mortality. In all, 387 patients were eligible for analysis, and 13% received living donor grafts. Our results demonstrate that this group had significantly fewer complications, shorter length of hospital stay, and reduced mortality in comparison with recipients of cadaveric donor grafts. The better postoperative outcomes from living donor grafts could result from careful selection of the donor and less inflammatory injury, minimizing risk in the postoperative period.