85 Usefulness of kidney preimplantation biopsies from deceased donors for kidney transplant allocation

Abstract

INTRODUCTION AND OBJECTIVES: The number of discarded kidneys for transplantation approaches 25% in the Spanish transplant registry. The main cause(w50%) is the presence of advanced histological lesions in kidney pre-implantation biopsies. Transplants results with expanded criteria donors are poorer than results with standard donors and kidneys with advanced histological lesions are not used in many transplant centers. AIM: To analyze transplant results from deceased donors using pre-implantation biopsies to evaluate expanded donors in our renal transplant unit. METHODS: Since 2009 all kidneys offered to our transplant unit were accepted for clinical examination. A pre-implantation kidney biopsy is obtained in patients with expanded criteria. Pre-implantation biopsies are processed in paraffin and pathologists cathegorizes the biopsies according to the Banff criteria (from 0 to 3). Individual scores are added and a pre-implantation score ranging from 0 to 15 is obtained. In general, kidneys with a pre-implantation donor score > 7 are discarded. An old-for-old policy is applied for kidney allocation with a donor/recipient age difference lower than 15 years. Kidneys with a donor biopsy score >5 were only transplanted in recipients older than 60 years RESULTS: Between 2009 and 2013 we evaluated 404 kidneys and 41 (10%) were discarded. Only 20 kidneys (5%) were discarded due to a pre-implantation biopsy score >7. Thus, 362 transplants were performed and according to our protocol in 254 cases (70%) a pre-implantation biopsy was obtained. Donors with a pre-implantation biopsy were older (61 10 vs. 39 10 years, p 5, n1⁄479) have a similar renal function at 1 year (45 14 vs. 46 15 mL/min) and a similar 5-year graft survival (81.4% vs. 83.5%) than transplants from kidneys with lower scores (1 to 5). CONCLUSIONS: Careful evaluation and selection of deceased donors and renal transplant recipients allows to reduce the number of discarded kidneys (10% in our unit) and to maintain standard transplant results.