Dopamine treatment of human cadaver kidney graft recipients: a prospectively randomized trial

In a prospectively randomized trial, 50 human cadaver kidney graft recipients were tested for the effect of dopamine infusion on kidney function after transplantation. The kidneys were taken from beating-heart donors under optimal conditions. The dopamine infusion did not affect the dialysis frequency in the 1st week after transplantation, in the dopamine group only slightly better creatinine clearances could be detected. However, the diuresis increased significantly when dopamine was given and this resulted in the fact that in the dopamine group 47.4% of the patients were dialyzed although the diuresis amounted to more than 11/day as compared to 15.7% of such patients in the nondopamine group. These findings correspond to experimental data, which showed that the dopamine infusion of the recipient mainly ameliorated renal function in those cases where kidneys were taken after hypotensive injury of the donor.