Deceased donor kidney procurement: Systematic review of the surgical technique

Kidney procurement procedure must be carried out following a standardized technique in order to optimize kidney grafts for their subsequent implantation.

Review of the available literature on kidney procurement procedure.

Narrative review of the available evidence on deceased donor kidney procurement technique after a search of relevant manuscripts indexed in PubMed, EMBASE and Scielo written in English and Spanish.

Deceased donor kidney procurement can be divided into two groups, donation after brain death (DBD) and donation after circulatory death (DCD). Kidney procurement in DBD frequently includes other chest and/or abdominal organs, requiring multidisciplinary surgical coordination. During the harvesting procedure, the renal vascular pedicle must remain intact for subsequent implantation and reduced ischemia time.

Adequate execution and perfect knowledge of the technique for surgical removal and anatomy reduces the rate of graft losses associated to inadequate harvesting techniques.