Influence of early function on long-term pediatric cadaveric renal allograft survival.

The significance of early renal graft function on long-term transplant survival is controversial. From our pediatric renal transplant population we studied 151 children who had an initial cadaveric renal transplant, were dependent on dialysis before transplantation and were 5 to 19 years old at transplantation. We used dependence upon dialysis as the parameter for early graft function. There was a statistically significant difference in long-term graft survival between patients who were independent of and dependent on dialysis at 1 week and 1 month postoperatively. Our results show that early renal graft function is important for long-term graft survival. All efforts should be directed to obtaining early renal graft function by proper organ procurement, storage, operative technique and aggressive postoperative management.