Results in necrokidney transplantation to pair recipients

Attempting to find out whether universal kidney donors exist in the same sense as do universal blood donors this investigation was performed on donors and recipients in 45 pair transplantations, or in other words on 90 recipients transplanted with kidneys from 45 donors (G.S. 6 months). The result of pair transplantation was the same in the two recipients in 23 instances; 15 pairs had successful transplantations while the grafts failed in 8 pairs. In 22 pair transplantations the two recipients had different postoperative records. The mean age of the donors was 32 years, the mean age of the recipients 42. The donor age was lower in the successful pair transplantations than in the failures. The duration of cold ischaemia ranged from 6.6 to 9 hours in the different groups. The results of transplantation were not influenced by the duration of ischaemia. A higher degree of histocompatibility and a greater number of shared haplotypes were features typical of the successful cases. Moreover, antibodies occurred less frequently in connection with successful transplantations. Absence of shared halotypes and/or incompatibility in locus B had an unfavourable effect on the course of grafting. By contrast, the presence of blood group O in both donor and recipient and even in donor alone had a favourable effect. HLA-A2 occurred less frequently and A1 and B8 more frequently in donors whose grafts failed than in the donors of successful pair transplants. The question of whether a universal kidney donor exists could not be definitely answered on the basis of this investigation.