Cardiovascular risk assessment prior to kidney transplantation

The objective was to find out risk factors indicating the patients directly to selective coronarography (SCG) to avoid unnecessary non-invasive testing and in their absence to asses low cardiovascular risk and faster inclusion on the waiting list.

Cardiovascular diseases (CVD) are the most frequent cause of death in dialysed patients. The aim of our retrospective analysis was to identify risk factors for coronary artery disease (CAD) before kidney transplantation (KTx).

Our retrospective analysis consisted of 55 dialysed patients (46 males, 9 females, p < 0.0001), undergoing SCG before KTx. We divided the patients according to SCG results (negative, n = 40, positive finding, n = 15).

We confirmed a significantly lower incidence of diabetic nephropathy (p = 0.0484), ischaemic heart disease (p = 0.0174) and CAD (p = 0.0001) in patients without percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI; negative finding). Haemodynamically significant coronary stenosis correlated with the occurrence of stroke in a patient's history (p = 0.0104). We identified predictors for performing PCI (positive result): type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM) (p = 0.0472), high-density lipoprotein cholesterol ≤ 1.03 mmol/l (p = 0.0359), total calcium level ≤ 2 mmol/l (p = 0.0309), phosphate level ≥ 1.45 mmol/l (OR 0.2034; p = 0.0351).

In our analysis, patients with DM and poorly managed chronic kidney disease/mineral bone disease were the riskiest subset of the patients with a positive SCG finding (Tab. 4, Fig. 2, Ref. 30). Text in PDF www.elis.sk Keywords: kidney transplantation, coronary artery disease, selective coronarography, cardiovascular risk.