The OPTN/UNOS Renal Transplant Registry

Abstract

The 10-year graft survival rates for first renal transplants performed during 1990-1994 and 1995-1999 and reported to the OPTN/UNOS Renal Transplant Registry increased from 57-58% for living donor transplants, from 42-46% for deceased donors aged 60 or under, and from 22-28% for donors over age 60 comparing the 2 intervals. These modest increases were accompanied by a 2% decline in 10-year patient survival for recipients of living and younger deceased donor grafts and a 1% improvement in patient survival for recipients of older donor kidneys. The 5-year graft and patient survival rates for transplants performed between 2000 and 2004 were 80% and 90% for living donor, 69% and 90% for standard criteria deceased donor and 55% and 82% for expanded criteria donor transplants, respectively. There was no significant improvement when compared to the 1995-1999 period for any of these groups and patient survival had declined by 1% among recipients of living or standard criteria deceased donors. recipients of living or standard criteria deceased donor kidneys had a 6-7% higher 5-year survival rate and longer graft half-lives than recipients of HLA mismatched kidneys. The number of local HLA-DR matched transplants (excluding zero-HLA-ABDR mismatched grafts) has been declining since 1998 and was affected by the activity of the local donation service area (presumably reflecting the size of the waiting list). There was a modest increase in the percentage of broadly sensitized recipients transplanted during 2002-2004 from 8-10% of standard deceased donor The median age for recipients of primary standard criteria deceased donor transplants increased from 43 during the period 1990-1994 to 51 during 2000-2004 and may explain the lack of improvement in long-term graft survival rates. When patients aged 19-35 were analyzed separately during the 3 periods, there was a 3-4% increase in actuarial or projected 10-year graft survival for recipients of living or younger deceased donor kidneys during each interval (p < 0.001). Changes to the kidney allocation algorithm that affect the role of HLA matching have not had a striking impact on the number or percentage of zero HLA-ABDR mismatched SCD transplants, which account for 16-17% of SCD transplants each year. The number and percentage of HLA-matched ECD transplants declined from 113 (12%) in 2001 to 63 (4%) in 2004. The 56% 5-year graft survival rate for recipients of HLA-matched ECD kidneys was not significantly better than that for HLA-mismatched grafts, whereas HLA-matched and from 2-4% of living donor kidney recipients that was temporally associated with improved technologies for detecting anti-HLA antibodies. The presence of panel reactive antibodies had almost no effect on 5-year graft survival among retransplanted patients. The number of transplants between spouses leveled off in 2001 at about 700 transplants each year. The number of non-spouse unrelated living donor transplants has increased 10-fold over the past 10 years to 1,341 in 2004 and does not appear to be slowing.