Retrospective Study of Long-term Survival and Related Factors Among Kidney Transplant Recipients in China

Renal transplantation is the choice for patients with end-stage renal disease. In the past two decades, progress in surgical procedure, medical care, and immunosuppression have significantly improved the short-term results of organ transplantation. Nevertheless, grafts continue to fail over time, these improvements in immunosuppression and reduced incidence of acute rejection episodes have had only minimal effects on chronic allograft dysfunction and late graft loss. Long-term patient's death and graft failure are the main limitations for a better performance of renal transplant programs.

Multiple factors have been shown to affect the outcome of renal transplantation. These include demographic characteristics such as race and ethnicity, pretransplantation dialysis course, the timing of the transplantation，and the patients' co morbidities. Patient response to the transplantation procedure (e.g., delayed graft function, acute rejection, and acute tubular necrosis) is strongly associated with the long-term prognosis. In the last decade, with the increase of immunosuppressive agents in our therapeutic arsenal, several attempts have been made to improve graft performance. However, the majority of trials aiming to avoid calcineurin inhibitor (CNI)-related nephrotoxicity only reported short-term data. Also, and because of the lack of assessment of the role of the different ethiopathogenic factors that lead to graft damage, just avoiding CNI-related nephrotoxicity may be an oversimplification of the problem in the prevention of graft attrition.

There are many studies which have evaluated the long-term outcomes of graft and patient survival and have analyzed multiple relative factors. Unfortunately, such data in Chinese population are lacking. Meanwhile, the situation in China is somewhat different with others, such as race, the dosage of immunosuppressant and so on. A better characterization of the weight of immune and non-immune factors responsible for graft damage may help us to improve the outcomes in transplant recipients. Studies derived from well-designed and well-performed patient registries can provide a real world view of clinical practice, patient outcomes, safety, and comparative effectiveness and cost effectiveness. The goal of this project is to analyze retrospective data collected by disease registry, then to evaluate the graft and recipient outcomes of kidney transplants and relative impact factors.

Inclusion criteria

• Kidney transplant recipients
• Received a transplant from Jan 1,1995 to Dec 31, 2007, only including those with living donor grafts
• Age: 18-75 years

Exclusion criteria

• Multiple-organ transplant recipients
• Patients records with missing information in 12 months post-transplantation
• Patients who did not have the information regarding their maintenance immunosuppressive therapy