[Gastrointestinal complications in renal transplantation]

Seventy-nine gastrointestinal complications in 480 recipients of a renal transplant (RT) (16%) are described. The most frequent complication was high digestive haemorrhage (HDH) (19/480) (2.9%); other complications were: esophagitis, gastroenteritis, diverticulitis, cholecystitis, intestinal tuberculosis, rectal ulcer and colonic polyps. Mortality secondary to gastrointestinal complications was 1.1%. Sixty-seven percent of cases with peptic ulcer developed HDH, an incidence higher than that observed in the general population (20%). Twenty-one percent of transplanted patients with DH had ulcer background. Cholecystitis and diverticulitis were complications with a low incidence (0.2% and 0.6%, respectively) which do not seem to justify aggressive diagnostic and therapeutic manoeuvres prior to the transplant. Prevalence of intestinal tuberculosis in this series (0.4%) was higher to that described in the literature.