Pediatric renal transplantation.

1. Approximately half of the pediatric patients received grafts from their parents and half from cadaver donors. Pediatric recipients accounted for only 5% of cadaver-donor transplants. 2. Pediatric patients differed from adults in the incidence of primary disease, principally in the occurrence of diabetes (almost no juvenile diabetics had progressed to renal failure compared with 30% among adults). Obstructive uropathy and dysplasia were the primary diseases for about 37% of pediatric patients compared with 3% in adults. 3. Pediatric patients under the age of one had a markedly lower graft survival with cadaver donors. Such patients had much higher survival rates with parental donor kidneys. 4. Pediatric retransplants from parents had a graft survival comparable to adult grafts. Regraft survival in children given cadaveric kidneys were significantly lower than adult grafts. 5. Patients under the age of 18 with no diuresis on the first day or who required dialysis in the first week had a markedly lower graft survival rate compared with that of adults with comparable early dysfunction. 6. Kidneys from donors under 2 years old yielded a 67% one-year graft survival rate in infants, but an 87% survival in patients 16-18 years of age at 6 selected individual centers. These centers, that had performed more than 20 infant-donor renal transplants, achieved results comparable to those of transplants using grafts from older donors in recipients aged over 11 years. 7. Pediatric patients who received grafts mismatched for 5- and 6-HLA antigens had a significantly lower graft survival rate than those with better matches. 8. Black patients ages 11-18 years old had a lower graft survival rate than White patients in the same age group.