THE EFFECT OF DONOR-SPECIFIC TRANSFUSIONS (DST) ON SHORT AND LONG-TERM RENAL ALLOGRAFT FUNCTION

In order to evaluate the effect of donor-speclflc blood transfusions (DST) on short- and long-term renal allograft function, a group consisted of 20 patients who underwent DST was compared to 35 patients who received HLA-identical living related donor graft and 25 patients who received one-haplotyplc donor graft.

After transplantation, the time in which serum creatinine levels returned to the normal range in DST (4.1 ± 2.3 days) and HLA-identical groups (4.3±2.6 days) was significantly shorter than those in the onehaplotype group (6.2 ± 3.2 days) (p<0.05). While in one patient of tHe DST group (5.0 %) and three patients of the HLA-identical group (8.6 %) the serum creatinine level was not decreased below to 1.5 mgldl, this number was six (24.0 %) in the one-haplotype group. In the first and second groups acute rejection incidence (respectively 25 % and 20 %) was lower than in the one-haplotype group (44 %), but these differences were not statistically significant. In the DST group three-year graft survival (85.7%) was similar to HLA-identical group (85.2 %), and better than the one-haplotype group (78.9 %).We conclude that results similar to HLA-identical transplantation may be obtained using the DST procedure in poorly matched donor and recipient combinations.