Survival of living donor renal transplant recipients in Sri Lanka: a single-center study.

Chronic kidney disease is one of the main public health concerns in Sri Lanka. In comparison with dialysis, successful kidney transplantation improves both patient survival and quality of life, relieves the burden of dialysis in patients suffering from end-stage renal disease and decreases the cost of healthcare to the society and government. The objective of this retrospective cohort study was to evaluate graft and patient survival rates in patients who were transplanted from living donors at the Nephrology Unit of the National Hospital of Sri Lanka from January 2005 to January 2011. Data were collected using an interviewer-administered questionnaire and through a review of past medical records. The Kaplan-Meier method was used to determine the survival rate, the log rank test was used to compare survival curves and the Cox proportional hazard model was used for multivariate analysis. Mean follow-up was 26.44±16.6 months. The five-year death-censored graft survival of kidney transplant recipients from living donors in our center was 93.5% and the five-year patient survival was 82.2%, which is comparable with other transplant programs around the world. The number of acute rejection episodes was an independent risk factor for graft survival. Delayed graft function, younger recipient age and unknown cause of end-stage renal disease were found to be risk factors for graft failure but after adjusting for confounding factors, and the difference was not apparent.