The study revealed that deceased donor AKI status had no association with death-censored or all-cause graft failure (Table). “Our key finding was that that deceased-donor AKI had no association with either short-term or long-term survival of the organ,” says Dr. Parikh. AKI kidney transplantations had comparable rates of recipient graft
survival, even among the highest stages of injury. Results were consistent after examining by AKI stage and adjusting for recipient and transplant characteristics. More recipients of AKI kidneys developed delayed graft function (29% vs 22%), but few recipients developed primary nonfunction, regardless of deceased donor AKI status. To determine how many potentially viable kidneys with AKI were lost during the study, the authors assessed how many deceased donor kidneys with AKI were recovered and then either transplanted or discarded. Nearly 17,500 of the more than 20,500 available AKI kidneys were procured over the 3-year study, but only slightly more than 12,700 were transplanted. “This means almost 8,000 organs were either rejected after procurement or never obtained at all simply because the donors had AKI,” Dr. Parikh says.
