Associations of Renal Function at 1-Year After Kidney Transplantation With Subsequent Return to Dialysis, Mortality, and Healthcare Costs

Associations of Renal Function at 1-Year After Kidney Transplantation With Subsequent Return to Dialysis, Mortality, and Healthcare Costs: Background. Improved early kidney transplant outcomes limit the contemporary utility of standard clinical endpoints. Quantifying the relationship of renal function at 1 year after transplant with subsequent clinical outcomes and healthcare costs may facilitate cost-benefit evaluations among transplant recipients.
Methods. Data for Medicare-insured kidney-only transplant recipients (1995–2003) were drawn from the United States Renal Data System. Associations of estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) level at the first transplant anniversary with subsequent death-censored graft failure and patient death in posttransplant years 1 to 3 and 4 to 7 were examined by parametric survival analysis. Associations of eGFR with total health care costs defined by Medicare payments were assessed with multivariate linear regression.

Systematic Review: Kidney Transplantation Compared With Dialysis in Clinically Relevant Outcomes

Systematic Review: Kidney Transplantation Compared With Dialysis in Clinically Relevant Outcomes:

Individual studies indicate that kidney transplantation is associated with lower mortality and improved quality of life compared with chronic dialysis treatment. We did a systematic review to summarize the benefits of transplantation, aiming to identify characteristics associated with especially large or small relative benefit. Results were not pooled because of expected diversity inherent to observational studies. Risk of bias was assessed using the Downs and Black checklist and items related to time-to-event analysis techniques.