Improving success rates of kidney transplantation

One-year patient survival rates have improved remarkably, from 84% in 1968 to 97% in 1980 for parental donor grafts, and from 65% to 90% for cadaver donor grafts. In contrast, graft survival rates showed a steady decline from 1968 to 1975 but subsequently improved at a rate of 2.4% per year for parent donor transplants and 2.7% per year for cadaver donor transplants. During this period of improving survival rates, the pretransplant transfusion exposure rate increased from 52% in 1977 to 91% by 1981. We conclude that transplantation has now reached a new level of acceptability as a clinical treatment modality and that blood transfusion has produced its effect on graft survival when results are disseminated over a large number of transplant centers.