Kidney Recipients Do Well When Spouses Are the Donor

Renal transplants from spousal donors have long-term outcomes similar to those of transplants from other living unrelated donors (LUD), even though spousal donors have more HLA mismatches and are older, researchers reported in Nephron Clinical Practice (2009;113:c241-c249).

They compared outcomes of 77 spousal donor transplants and 368 transplants from other LUDs. The 10-year graft survival rates were 60.6% for spousal donor grafts and 58.5% for other LUD grafts. The 10-year biopsy-proven acute rejection-free survival rates (85.5% vs. 89.6%) and 10-year patient survival rates (84.2% vs. 79.6%).

None of these differences were statistically significant. The average number of HLA mismatches was 4.2 among spousal donors compared with 3.4 among other LUDs. Spousal donors were significantly older (41 vs. 33 years).

From the October 01, 2009 Issue of Renal and Urology News