Donor and recipient age effect.

Donor Age 1. Kidney graft survival rates from donors who were younger than 5 have not improved substantially during the 10 years; approximately 40% one-year graft survival in 1975 to about 50% in 1985. On the other hand, grafts from donors 6 years and older have improved from about 40% to 75% in 1985. Most notable has been the marked increase in graft survival rates from donors who were older than 59 years. 2. Cyclosporine seems to adversely affect graft survival from older donors. Thus the improvement is greater for kidneys from young donors than from donors who are 55 or older. 3. Female donors. older than 20 years of age resulted in one-year graft survival rates that were about 10% lower than for kidneys from comparable-aged male donors when cyclosporine was used. 4. The first day nonfunction rate and the one-month nonfunction rates for cyclosporine-treated patients were higher than for conventional treatment in the older age kidneys. Thus some of the effect of cyclosporine in the older kidney takes place within the first month. 5. Grafts from donors under 9 years of age were more frequently reported to have failed due to immunologic failure than grafts from older donors. Kidneys from donors younger than 3 had the highest immunologic failure rate as well as the highest technical failure rate. Even for recipients younger than 3, it appears that older donor kidneys succeed at a higher rate. Recipient Age 1. Recipients of all ages over 6 have approximately the same graft survival rates.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)