Antibody‐mediated rejection (AbAR) is increasingly recognized in the renal allograft population, and successful therapeutic regimens have been developed to prevent and treat AbAR, enabling excellent outcomes even in patients highly sensitized to the donor prior to transplant. It has become critical to develop standardized criteria for the pathological diagnosis of AbAR. This article presents international consensus criteria for and classification of AbAR developed based on discussions held at the Sixth Banff Conference on Allograft Pathology in 2001. This classification represents a working formulation, to be revisited as additional data accumulate in this important area of renal transplantation.

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A number of potentially modifiable risk factors independently increase the incidence of wound complications among renal transplant recipients receiving sirolimus-based immunosuppression de novo.

Addition of rituximab improved the outcomes of PP treatment of antibody mediated rejection episodes.

New technological advances in the field of histocompatibility have provided an approach to systematically address the specificity of positive lymphocyte crossmatches. These approaches can now confirm whether a positive crossmatch is (or is not) due to class I and/or class II antibodies directed against donor HLA antigens. The information gained from the application of these sensitive and specific technologies can be used to predict crossmatch results for highly sensitized patients. In summary, these emerging technologies have provided the tools to reliably determine the clinical relevance of a positive lymphocyte crossmatch.