Impact of age and gender matching on long-term graft function and actual graft survival in live-related renal transplantation: Retrospective study from Sindh Institute of Urology and transplantation, Pakistan.

In renal transplantation, donor and allograft age are known to have an important influence on the outcome of the graft, reflecting functional renal mass. We evaluated the impact of gender and age matching in living-donor renal transplantation on long-term graft survival and actual graft function over five years from the day of transplantation. We retrospectively analyzed 500 primary live-related donor renal transplants performed from August 2007 to December 2008 at Sindh Institute of Urology and Transplantation, Karachi, Pakistan. Donors and recipients were divided into two age groups [young (YD) and elderly (ER)] with 40 years as cutoff line. Four donor recipient groups according to age match and age mismatch: YD/YR - ED/ER - YD/ER - ED/YR and four groups according to donor-recipient gender combinations: male recipients of male donors (MR/MD)-female recipients of male donors (FR/MD)-female recipients of female donors (FR/FD)-male recipients of female donors MR/FD) were studied. Serum creatinine was used to assess graft function after transplantation. The Kaplan-Meier method with the log-rank test was used to assess actual graft survival at five years. Actual graft function of four study groups based on age difference had no statistically significant difference at five years (P = 0.094). Regarding the actual graft survival, the best results were seen in young donor to elderly recipient group as compared to all other age combination groups. At five-year post-transplant, MD/MR had significantly better graft function than MR/FD and FR/MD had significantly better graft function than FD/FR and FD/MR. The actual graft survival was best in male-to-male (86%) compared to the lowest in female-to-female transplants (75%). The graft function at five years was better in elderly recipients of young donor kidneys. The actual graft survival was influenced positively by young donor age and negatively influenced by pre-transplant hepatitis C positivity of recipients.