Results of Renal Transplantations Using Living Donors and Histocompatibility Testing

Abstract

During the period Feb. 1967-May 1969, 35 renal transplantations were performed on 32 patients using living related donors and histocompatibility tests. ALG was not used. the youngest patient was 9 years old, the oldest 51; the mean age was 27 years. the oldest donor was 73. Five transplanations were performed on children under 15. in 3 cases, retransplantations were performed. the most frequent complications, other than rejection, were hypertension, recurrent pyelocystitis and other infections. Nephrotic syndrome occurred in one case. of 27 transplants with an observation time of one year, 16 were functioning without renal insufficiency and 5 with insufficiency, i.e. a total of 21 transplants (78 per cent). One patient had a well-functioning re-transplant, 2 patients were under dialysis and 3 had expired. Twenty patients were able to return to work. After an observation period of two years, 6 out of 10 primary transplants were still functioning without renal insufficiency. Six patients in the whole series died. the clinical results showed a fairly good correlation with the histocompatibility degree. the results were very encouraging in the HL-A identical group. When nephrectomy was performed in connection with transplantation, the results were poorer than when this operation was performed before transplantation.