Reduced steroid doses in cadaveric renal transplantation

Commencing 1978, we reduced the initial dose of prednisolone to 40 mg/day against a former 120-200 mg/day for cadaver kidney recipients aged 60 years and above. The patient and graft survivals at 1 year which earlier had been 59 and 47% is 69 and 46% after the change (NS). From August 1980, we reduced the initial prednisolone dose to 30 mg/day for all recipients of cadaver kidneys. From the same time, all patients were given 5 units of leukocyte poor blood prior to the transplantation, and in addition, RATG (Stanford) was given during 2 weeks immediately following the transplantation. Preceding the reduction the patient and graft survivals at 6 months were 91 and 62% while they were 88 and 88% after the reduction (NS). The intravenous dose of methylprednisolone, which is used for the treatment of acute rejection, was reduced twice in this period, first from 6 to 3 g, and then to 1.75 g total dose. The proportion of rejections, successfully treated, had remained unchanged. Our preliminary results support the notion that it is possible to use lower steroid doses than previously in conjunction with cadaveric kidney transplantations. However, we have introduced other alterations of the routines which could have influenced the results.