Background: Kidney transplantation is the treatment of choice for end-stage chronic kidney disease. It improves quality of life and increases life expectancy. At present, Niger is one of the poorest countries in the world does not practice kidney transplantation; thus, patients continue to be referred to other countries for transplantation.
Methods: This descriptive cross-sectional study was carried out at the Nephrology Department of the National Hospital Amirou Boubacar Diallo in Niamey, Niger over a 5-month period. It included all patients that had benefited from kidney transplantation with the aim to evaluate patient and graft survival.
Results: We identified 25 patients. The male to female ratio was 2:1. The average age was 45.4 years ± 11.1 years. The average age of donors was 36.1 years ± 12.6 years with a clear male predominance (17 males to 8 females); all of them were related-donors with 72% of them being brothers or sisters. The causative nephropathy was undetermined in 80% of patients. Sixty-four percent of patients had their kidney transplant in Maghreb, including 16% in Tunisia. The complications were mostly medical (68%), as 20% were immunologic; 8% infectious; 16% metabolic; 20% cardiovascular, and 4% were related to recurrence of the initial nephropathy. Surgical complications involved 6 patients (24%): 5 were vascular cases and one was a urological case. With a median follow-up of 5 years, the patients' survival was 84%, the graft survival was 56%, and death-censored graft survival was 67%.
Conclusion: In Niger, after kidney transplantation, the patients' survival is satisfactory, whereas the graft survival is not, mostly due to inadequate follow-up check-ups and prohibitive prices of immunosuppressants.
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