Primary disease effects and associations in patients without early posttransplant events

Many patients receiving primary cadaver renal transplants have complications in their early post-transplant courses which can affect and possibly confound long-term outcome analyses. Forty-four percent of primary cadaver recipients in the present study were excluded because of early events: delayed graft function (DGF) and early rejection episodes (ERE). Even with these exclusions, similar conclusions to the previous study (1) were noted: that is, the patients with systemic diseases (NS, HTN and IDDM) had the lowest 5-year graft survivals (57-62%) compared to those with diseases that were primarily renal (ALP, IGA and PC) which had better 5-year graft survival results (76-81%). Long-term half-life calculations also demonstrated improved graft survival prognoses in patients with primarily renal diseases (15-18 years in ALP, IGA and PC vs 6-8 years in IDDM, HTN and NS). Again, with the exclusions of patients with early events, Black recipients with HTN did not fare as well as non-Blacks (5-year graft survival of only 52% vs 69%). Many long-term graft losses were due to deaths, oftentimes from cardiovascular diseases. This was especially prominent in disease states with the greatest potential for arteriosclerosis (IDDM, HTN and NS). When patients with early events were excluded, the percent of graft losses attributable to patient death ranged from 21-58%, but were the highest with HTN, PC (age related) and IDDM: 41%, 45% and 58%. A similar analysis in IDDM patients receiving either a LD, SPK or KAT-type transplant revealed that although there was a 10% reduction in 5-year graft survival for KAT patients, most of these graft losses were owing to patient death. Outcomes in SPK and LD in IDDM patients were similar, suggesting selection bias and center effects with the latter two types of transplants going to healthier IDDM patients. It is too soon to conclude whether FK506 has a particularly beneficial role in one primary disease or another as compared to CsA. Combined kidney transplantation with a liver or heart transplant appears to be a reasonable risk. When graft losses due to patient deaths are accounted for, kidney graft survival was approximately that of kidney alone transplantation, suggesting again that graft loss due to patient death must be accounted for when analyzing transplant graft survival.