The first 100 kidney transplants from living related donors at Groote Schuur Hospital

Improved results with cadaver kidney transplantation and the increase in the number of cadaver organs have caused the continued use of donor kidneys from living relatives to be questioned. In this analysis of our first 100 renal transplants involving a living related donor, the 5-year graft survival rate was 70%. The 5-year graft survival rate for recipients of grafts from HLA-identical donors was 81%, as opposed to the 64% survival rate for grafts from one-haplotype donors. Recipients of grafts from one-haplotype-matched donors who received donor-specific blood transfusions demonstrated better graft survival than those who were not transfused. This analysis demonstrates that the results of living related kidney transplantation are good, and suggests that donor-specific blood transfusions may be beneficial