Impact of single centre kidney‐exchange transplantation to increase living donor pool in India: A cohort study involving non‐anonymous allocation

Abstract

AimIn India, 85% of organ donations are from living donors and 15% are from deceased donors. One‐third of living donors were rejected because of ABO or HLA incompatibility. Kidney exchange transplantation (KET) is a cost‐effective and legal strategy to increase living donor kidney transplantation (LDKT) by 25%–35%.MethodsWe report our experience with 539 KET cases and the evolution of a single‐centre program to increase the use of LDKT.ResultsBetween January 2000 and 13 March, 2024, 1382 deceased donor kidney transplantations and 5346 LDKT were performed at our centre, including 10% (n = 539) from KET. Of the 539 KET, 80.9% (n = 436) were ABO incompatible pairs, 11.1% (n = 60) were compatible pairs, and 8% (n = 43) were sensitized pairs. There were 75% 2‐way (n = 2 × 202 = 404), 16.2% 3‐way (n = 3 × 29 = 87), 3% 4‐way (n = 4 × 4 = 16), 1.8% 5‐way (n = 5 × 2 = 10), 2.2% 6‐way (n = 6 × 2 = 12), and 1.8% 10‐way KET (n = 10 × 1 = 10). Of the recipients 81.2% (n = 438) were male and 18.8% (n = 101) were female, while of the donors, 78.5% (n = 423) were female and 21.5% (n = 116) were male. All donors were near relatives; wives (54%, n = 291) and mothers (20%, n = 108) were the most common donors. At a median follow‐up of 8.2 years, patient survival, death censored graft survival, acute rejection, and median serum creatinine levels of functioning grafts were 81.63% (n = 440), 91% (n = 494), 9.8% (n = 53) and 1.3 mg/dL respectively. We credited the success to maintaining a registry of incompatible pairs, high‐volume LDKT programs, non‐anonymous allocation and teamwork.ConclusionThis is the largest single‐centre KET program in Asia. We report the challenges and solutions to replicate our success in other KET programs.image