Background: Older and marginal donors, increasingly used to overcome organ shortness, often have a cerebrovascular accident as cause of death and could have vascular lesions in their kidneys.
Methods: In this literature study, we evaluated the predictive value of vasculopathy in the renal allograft at the time of transplantation, on the subsequent graft function.
Results: Short-term graft survival rates do not seem to be diminished by suboptimal donor histology. When vasculopathy is clearly present at the time of transplantation, impaired kidney function is showed at 1-week posttransplantation, at hospital discharge, or at 3 months and an increased frequency of delayed graft function. The long-term graft survival rate, in the studies of Pokorna and Taub, was significantly lower in the group with arteriolosclerosis. Wang et al. concluded in their study that arterial fibrous intimal thickening is the single most important histological predictor of both graft loss and delayed graft function. However, Minakawa et al. observed no significant correlation between 1 or 2-year graft survival and vasculopathy score. Severe vascular lesions in the donor kidney do affect the level of kidney function in the later posttransplant period as described in different studies (follow-up till 7 years posttransplantation).
Conclusions: Data obtained from the studies of donor biopsies sustain the notion that vasculopathy is a major determinant of the short-term and the long-term outcome of the kidney allograft.