The crossmatch in renal transplantation. Evaluation of flow cytometry as a replacement for standard cytotoxicity.

Flow cytometry (FC) is increasingly being used as a crossmatch procedure in addition to the standard complement-dependent cytotoxicity (CDC) test. In fact, FC offers a number of advantages over CDC and has the potential to become the primary crossmatch technique for cadaveric donor renal transplantation. We evaluated this possibility in 230 patients crossmatched by both CDC and FC. The results showed that when the T cell crossmatch was negative by FC it was always negative by CDC, and that when the T cell results were positive by CDC (IgM antibodies excluded) they were also positive by FC. As expected, a number of tests were T cell-positive by FC but negative by CDC. A T cell CDC crossmatch was more likely to be positive when FC was positive for both T and B cells and when FC results were quantitatively higher. However, FC was unable to consistently predict a positive, dithiothreitol-resistant B cell CDC crossmatch. A policy to transplant patients with negative FC results (70% of the patients evaluated) and not to transplant sensitized patients with FC+ T cell results (10%) would allow us to make a final decision with only FC in 80% of the cases. Actual graft survival was similar for nonsensitized first-transplant candidates with positive (83%) or all patients with negative (86%) FC results. We conclude that FC is sufficient to make a final decision in most cases. Wider utilization will require improvements in the ability of FC to measure B cell antibodies and to quantitate antibodies to T cells.