The living kidney donor: giving life, avoiding harm

Colm C. Magee

Brigham and Women's Hospital, Renal Division, Boston, MA, USA Email: cmagee{at}partners.org

Sir,

As discussed by Sommerer et al. [1] in their recent comprehensive review of living kidney donation, a negative anti-donor T- and B-cell crossmatch is essential before proceeding with transplantation, but this is essential only immediately pretransplant. Successful desensitization to HLA antigens—allowing subsequent transplantation—is now being performed in many centres including our own with various combinations of intravenous IgG, plasmapheresis, mycophenolate mofetil and tacrolimus. Reported short and medium term outcomes are encouraging [2,3].

Conflict of interest statement. None declared.

References

  1. Sommerer C, Wiesel M, Schweitzer-Rothers J, Ritz E, Zeier M. The living kidney donor: giving life, avoiding harm. Nephrol Dial Transplant 2003; 18:23–26[Free Full Text]
  2. Schweitzer EJ, Wilson JS, Fernandez-Vina M et al. A high panel-reactive antibody rescue protocol for cross-match-positive live donor kidney transplants. Transplantation 2000; 70:1531–1536[ISI][Medline]
  3. Glotz D, Antoine C, Julia P, Suberbielle-Boissel C. Desensitization and subsequent kidney transplantation of patients using intravenous immunoglobulin. Am J Transplant 2002; 2:758–760[CrossRef][ISI][Medline]




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