Renal transplantation in Nepal: the first year's experience.

A successful renal transplantation service was started in Nepal at the Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital in August 2008, and a continuing regular service is being provided currently to needy people. We report here our experience in thirty five end stage renal disease patients who received kidneys from close relatives during a one year period. The mean age of donors was 46.7 years. Seventeen (49%) donations were from parents, 13 (37%) from spouses, four (11%) between siblings and one (3%) between mother and daughter in law. Although the left kidney was given preference, right sided donor nephrectomy was needed in five (14%) cases. Six (17%) donors had minor postoperative problems. The mean age of recipients was 33.2 years, four (11%) of whom had pre-emptive renal transplantation. Recipients were immunosuppressed with dacluzimab, prednisolone, mycophenalate, and cyclosporine or tacrolimus. The average time taken for graft implantation was 137 minutes. The mean cold ischemia time and second warm ischemia time were 133 and 36 minutes respectively. Four (11%) patients developed urinary tract infection, three (9%) had significant hematuria, one (3%) developed a peri-transplant abscess, and one (3%) had ureteric ischemia and urine leak which required re-exploration in the early post-operative period. Four patients (11%) developed acute rejection of which three were cell-mediated rejection and one was antibody-mediated. There were two (6%) deaths, one due to transplant-related sepsis and the other due to subarachnoid hemorrhage following rupture of a posterior communicating artery aneurysm. No kidney has been lost otherwise.