The University of Minnesota, which has performed more than 2,500 living donor kidney transplants, reports that patients who have transplants with less than a year of dialysis have more successful outcomes.

"Patients who had preemptive transplants or less than 1
year of dialysis have better 5-year graft survival and more frequently
return to full-time employment," the University of Minnesota surgeons reported in the journal Annals of Surgery.

While many transplant centers in recent years, with the development of more powerful antirejection drugs, have deemphasized the importance of the kidney donor being a good human leukocyte antigen (HLA) match for the recipient, the University of Minnesota group takes a different view.

"Donor source (e.g., ideally HLA-identical sibling) continues to be important," the surgeons said. "For living donor transplants, rejection and graft survival rates are related to donor source. For living donors, donor source affects outcome."

The group said that for patients whose kidneys continue to function one-year after the transplant surgery, the key risk factors for long-term success were: