Infection Risk in Kidney Transplantation From Uncontrolled Donation After Circulatory Death Donors

Background. Uncontrolled donations after circulatory death (DCD) present 2 well-established risk factors for infection after kidney transplantation (KT): greater rates of delayed graft function (DGF) and antithymocyte globulin (ATG)-containing sequential therapies. Methods. We performed a prospective cohort study of our 291 KT patients between November 2008 and July 2011 to compare the incidences of infection between DCD (n = 87) and donation after brain death (DBD; n = 204) recipients. Most DCD donors were uncontrolled Maastricht categories 1 or 2. Backward stepwise Cox proportional hazards models were used to assess the impact of DCD on the primary study outcome. Results. As compared to the DBD group, DCD recipients were younger, less likely to have undergone previous transplantations, exhibited lower dialysis vintage, and displayed a greater incidence of DGF and graft loss, but lower incidence of acute rejection episodes. There were no differences in the non-death-censored graft survival at 2 years (log-rank P=.835). The DCD group showed lower cumulative incidences of overall, bacterial, cytomegalovirus (CMV), and non-CMV viral infections (P<.05 for all). Multivariate analysis, associated DCD with a lower risk of overall infection (hazard ratio: 0.41; 95% confidence interval: 0.28-0.60; P=.012), an effect that remained when the analysis was restricted to patients receiving ATG induction therapy. Finally, there were no differences in the cumulative incidence of overall infection when DCD recipients were compared with age-matched DBD controls: 43.7% vs 47.1% respectively (P=.648). Conclusion. Despite the higher rate of DGF and the use of ATG-containing sequential therapy, uncontrolled DCD policies were safe in terms of the risk of post-transplant infection.