The objective of this study was to compare enhanced recovery after surgery (ERAS) against traditional perioperative care for renal transplant recipients. Outcome measures included complications, length of stay (LOS), readmission rates, graft and patient survival up to one-year post-transplant. We initially screened Medline, Cochrane, Scopus, Embase and Web of Science databases. We identified 3029 records. From these, 114 full texts were scrutinized for inclusion. Finally, 10 studies were included in the meta-analysis corresponding to 2037 renal transplant recipients. ERAS resulted in lower incidence of urological complications (95CI: 0.276, 0.855) (I2 = 53.08%) compared to traditional perioperative practice. This referred to ureteric stenoses (95CI: 0.186-0.868) (I2 = 0%) and urinary tract infections (95CI: 0.230-0.978) (I2 = 71.55%). ERAS decreased recipients' LOS (95CI: -2.876, -0.835) (I2 = 86.55%). Compared to standard practice, ERAS protocols did not increase unplanned readmissions (95CI:0.800, 1.680) (I2 = 0%). Up to one-year post-transplant, graft survival rates were similar across the ERAS and the control groups (95CI:0.420, 1.722) (I2 = 0%). There was also no difference in recipients' one-year post-transplant survival (95CI:0.162, 3.586) (I2 = 0%). Our results suggest that ERAS protocols can be safely incorporated in the perioperative care of renal transplant recipients, decrease their urological complications and shorten their length of hospital stay without affecting unplanned readmission rates.
Keywords: enhanced recovery after surgery; kidney transplantation; length of hospital stay; postoperative complications; readmissions; solid organ transplantation; urological complications.