FRIDAY, May 21 (HealthDay News) -- In kidney transplantation, receipt of an organ that is low in weight in relation to the body weight of the recipient raises the recipient's risk of complications and transplant failure, according to a study published May 20 in Journal of the American Society of Nephrology.
Magali Giral, M.D., of Centre Hospitalo Universitaire in Nantes, France, and colleagues evaluated 1,189 patients who received a transplant between 1995 and 2006 to assess the long-term consequences of the weight of the kidney to the weight of the recipient (KwRw) ratio.
The researchers found the larger the incompatibility of the weight ratio, the higher the risk of recipients developing kidney problems. By two years of follow-up, a low KwRw ratio (less than 2.3 g/kg) was linked to a 55 percent increased risk of transplant failure. In addition, this low KwRw ratio was associated with a higher risk of proteinuria, more antihypertensive drugs, and segmental or global glomerulosclerosis.
"The authors are to be congratulated for describing a novel measure that may have important implications for long-term outcomes in renal allograft recipients," the author of an accompanying editorial writes.
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