Pulmonary pathology in renal transplant recipients

Studies of the lungs have revealed multiple functional and histopathological abnormalities in patients with chronic renal failure, but data following renal transplantation are extremely limited. We examined postmortem data from 20 transplant patients and found pulmonary abnormalities in most patients. The number of pulmonary abnormalities noted in patients with poor transplantation, averaged 5.3 per patient. The corresponding number was significantly less (3.4 per patient) in the group with good transplant renal function, surviving more than one year after transplantation. Pulmonary calcification, fibrosis, and hemosiderosis were found in several patients in the former group but in none of the latter group. This observation suggests reversibility of these pulmonary abnormalities with successful renal transplantation.