Kidney transplantation at Tokyo Women's Medical University.

The first case of kidney transplantation at our institution was carried out in 1971, and this first renal transplant recipient is still living with a functioning kidney. From 1971 through the end of 2011, more than 3000 cases of kidney transplantation have been carried out at our institution. Since 1983, cyclosporine-based immunosuppression has been employed at our center. During this period, most of the patients were treated with cyclosporine- or tacrolimus-based immunosuppression. The latest outcomes of kidney transplantation seem to have significantly improved compared to earlier periods. Since 2000, 10 year-graft survival is more than 90% in living donor kidney transplantation and 82% in deceased donor kidney transplantation. To resolve the serious problem of donor organ shortage, expansion of the donor pool by various options such as transplantation using extended criteria donation, donation after cardiac death, ABO-incompatible (ABO-ILKT) donors, or crossmatch-positive donors, has been carried out at our institution over the last decade. We performed the first case of ABO-ILKT in 1989, and have performed more than 400 cases at our institution as of 2011. We will describe our experience of kidney transplantation, including ABO-ILKT, sensitized recipients, pathological analysis, pediatric renal transplantation, laparoscopic donor nephrectomy, and recurrent glomerulonephritis. The data shows good outcomes, however, we still have many issues to resolve to improve long-term renal transplant outcome and to reduce complications.