The influence of 13 clinical and immunological factors on renal graft survival: a contingency table analysis.

A statistical method which accounts for the heterogeneity of clinical materials is presented and applied to a material of necrokidney transplantations. It is concluded that the recipient sex and the period in which the transplantation was performed are the most important factors (best prognosis for female recipients, best programs for transplantations in the first periods) and that the HLA-match grade has a significant influence on graft survival for male recipients and transplantations with short cold ischemia time. The present analysis has furthermore demonstrate the heterogeneity of the material as judged by the associations between factors and the overestimation of the influence of some of the factors by direct comparisons.