Gram-negative sepsis following biopsy of a transplant recipient with asymptomatic allograft pyelonephritis

Hassan Al-Khayyat; Nigel Toussaint; Steve Holt; Peter Hughes

doi:10.1007/s13730-016-0241-2

Gram-negative sepsis following biopsy of a transplant recipient with asymptomatic allograft pyelonephritis

CEN Case Rep. 2017 May;6(1):46-49. doi: 10.1007/s13730-016-0241-2. Epub 2016 Nov 4.

Authors

Hassan Al-Khayyat¹, Nigel Toussaint^{2

3}, Steve Holt^{2

3}, Peter Hughes²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Nephrology, The Royal Melbourne Hospital, Grattan Street, Parkville, VIC, 3052, Australia. Hassan.Al-Khayyat@mh.org.au.
² Department of Nephrology, The Royal Melbourne Hospital, Grattan Street, Parkville, VIC, 3052, Australia.
³ Department of Medicine, University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC, Australia.

Abstract

Pyelonephritis post-renal transplantation is common and in up to 50% of cases can be asymptomatic. Transplant pyelonephritis shares a lot of histopathological features with acute cellular rejection. We present a case of asymptomatic acute graft pyelonephritis where a renal biopsy was complicated by sepsis, and discuss the difficulties in interpretation of renal histology in the setting of transplant pyelonephritis where rejection may also be a possibility, but differentiation is challenging.

Keywords: Acute graft pyelonephritis; Transplantation; Urinary tract infections.