In living donor transplantation, cold ischemia time is a concern in transplants involving kidney paired donation. The impact of cold ischemia time over eight hours is unknown. Here we examined the association of cold ischemia time with delayed graft function and allograft loss among 48,498 living recipients in the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients registry. The incidence of delayed graft function was low but significantly higher among patients with longer cold ischemia times (0-2.0 hours: 3.3%; 2.1-4.0 hours: 3.9%; 4.1-8.0 hours: 4.3%; 8.1-16.0 hours: 5.5%). In multivariate analyses, only those with cold ischemia times of 8.1-16.0 hours had increased odds of delayed graft function (odds ratio 1.47; 95% confidence interval 1.05-2.05) compared to patients with times of 0-2.0 hours. In multivariate time-to-event analyses, cold ischemia times of 16 hours or less were not associated with allograft loss from any cause including death or death-censored graft loss with hazard ratios for cold ischemia times between 8.0-16.0 hours of 0.97 (95% confidence interval 0.74-1.26) and 1.09 (0.81-1.48) compared to patients with times of 0-2.0 hours). The results were consistent in paired and non-kidney paired donation transplants and in those with living donors over 50 years of age. In subgroup analysis restricted to kidney paired donation recipients, there was no difference in the risk of delayed graft function with an odds ratio of 1.40 (0.88, 2.40) or all-cause graft loss with a hazard ratio of 0.89 (0.62, 1.30) in transplant recipients who received kidneys that were shipped versus not shipped. Thus, a cold ischemia time up to 16 hours has limited impact on living donor outcomes. These findings may help expand living donor transplantation through kidney paired donation.
Keywords: cold ischemia time; delayed graft function; kidney paired donation; living donor kidney transplantation; survival.
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