Faculty Bibliography

Background/UNASSIGNED:Gaps in our knowledge of long-term outcomes affect decision making for potential living kidney donors. Methods/UNASSIGNED:The Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients was asked to determine the feasibility of a candidate registry. Results/UNASSIGNED:Ten living kidney donor programs evaluated 2107 consecutive kidney donor candidates; 2099 of 2107 (99.6%) completed evaluations, 1578 of 2099 (75.2%) had a decision, and 790 of 1578 (50.1%) were approved to donate as of March 12, 2020. By logistic regression, candidates most likely to be approved were married or had attended college or technical school; those least likely to be approved had ≥1 of the following characteristics: Black race, history of cigarette smoking, and higher blood pressure, higher triglycerides, or higher urine albumin-to-creatinine ratios. Reasons for 617 candidates not being approved included medical issues other than chronic kidney disease risk (25.3%), chronic kidney disease risk (18.5%), candidate withdrawal (15.2%), recipient reason (13.6%), anatomical risk to the recipient (10.3%), noneconomic psychosocial (10.3%), economic (0.5%), and other reasons (6.4%). Conclusions/UNASSIGNED:These results suggest that a comprehensive living donor registry is both feasible and necessary to assess long-term outcomes that may inform decision making for future living donor candidates. There may be socioeconomic barriers to donation that require more granular identification so that active measures can address inequities. Some candidates who did not donate may be suitable controls for discerning the appropriateness of acceptance decisions and the long-term outcomes attributable to donation. We anticipate that these issues will be better identified with modifications to the data collection and expansion of the registry to all centers over the next several years.

BACKGROUND:To gather information on long-term outcomes after living donation, the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients (SRTR) conducted a pilot on the feasibility of establishing a comprehensive donor candidate registry. METHODS:A convenience sample of 6 US living liver donor programs evaluated 398 consecutive donor candidates in 2018, ending with the March 12, 2020, COVID-19 emergency. RESULTS:For 333/398 (83.7%), the donor or program decided whether to donate; 166/333 (49.8%) were approved, and 167/333 (50.2%) were not or opted out. Approval rates varied by program, from 27.0% to 63.3% (median, 46%; intraquartile range, 37.3-51.1%). Of those approved, 90.4% were white, 57.2% were women, 83.1% were < 50 years, and 85.5% had more than a high school education. Of 167 candidates, 131 (78.4%) were not approved or opted out because of: medical risk (10.7%); chronic liver disease risk (11.5%); psychosocial reasons (5.3%); candidate declined (6.1%); anatomical reasons increasing recipient risk (26.0%); recipient-related reasons (33.6%); finances (1.5%); or other (5.3%). CONCLUSIONS:A comprehensive national registry is feasible and necessary to better understand candidate selection and long-term outcomes. As a result, the US Health Resources and Services Administration asked SRTR to expand the pilot to include all US living donor programs.

A widely accepted severe acute respiratory syndrome 2 (SARS-CoV-2) vaccine could protect vulnerable populations, but the willingness of solid organ transplant recipients (SOTRs) to accept a potential vaccine remains unknown.

Kidneys from older (age ≥50 years) donation after cardiac death (DCD50) donors are less likely to be transplanted due to inferior posttransplant outcomes. However, candidates who decline a DCD50 offer must wait for an uncertain future offer. To characterize the survival benefit of accepting DCD50 kidneys, we used 2010-2018 Scientific Registry for Transplant Recipients (SRTR) data to identify 92 081 adult kidney transplantation candidates who were offered a DCD50 kidney that was eventually accepted for transplantation. DCD50 kidneys offered to candidates increased from 590 in 2010 to 1441 in 2018. However, 34.6% of DCD50 kidneys were discarded. Candidates who accepted DCD50 offers had 49% decreased mortality risk (adjusted hazard ratio [aHR] _0.46 0.51_0.55 , cumulative mortality at 6-year 23.3% vs 34.0%, P < .001) compared with those who declined the same offer (decliners). Six years after their initial DCD50 offer decline, 43.0% of decliners received a deceased donor kidney transplant (DDKT), 6.3% received living donor kidney transplant (LDKT), 22.6% died, 22.0% were removed for other reasons, and 6.0% were still on the waitlist. Comparable survival benefit was observed even with DCD donors age ≥60 (aHR: _0.42 0.52_0.65 , P < .001). Accepting DCD50 kidneys was associated with a substantial survival benefit; providers and patients should consider these benefits when evaluating offers.

Infections remain a major threat to successful kidney transplantation (KT). To characterize the landscape and impact of post-KT infections in the modern era, we used United States Renal Data System (USRDS) data linked to the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients (SRTR) to study 141 661 Medicare-primary kidney transplant recipients from January 1, 1999 to December 31, 2014. Infection diagnoses were ascertained by International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision (ICD-9) codes. The cumulative incidence of a post-KT infection was 36.9% at 3 months, 53.7% at 1 year, and 78.0% at 5 years. The most common infections were urinary tract infection (UTI; 46.8%) and pneumonia (28.2%). Five-year mortality for kidney transplant recipients who developed an infection was 24.9% vs 7.9% for those who did not, and 5-year death-censored graft failure (DCGF) was 20.6% vs 10.1% (P < .001). This translated to a 2.22-fold higher mortality risk (adjusted hazard ratio [aHR]: _2.15 2.22_2.29 , P < .001) and 1.92-fold higher DCGF risk (aHR: _1.84 1.91_1.98 , P < .001) for kidney transplant recipients who developed an infection, although the magnitude of this higher risk varied across infection types (for example, 3.11-fold higher mortality risk for sepsis vs 1.62-fold for a UTI). Post-KT infections are common and substantially impact mortality and DCGF, even in the modern era. Kidney transplant recipients at high risk for infections might benefit from enhanced surveillance or follow-up to mitigate these risks.