Kidney-transplant patients receiving living- or dead-donor organs have similar psychological outcomes (findings from thePI-KTstudy)

Abstract

Purpose Kidney transplantation (KT) is the treatment of choice for end-stage chronic kidney disease (CKD) and is well known to improve the clinical outcome of patients. However, the impact of KT on comorbid psychological symptoms, particularly depression and anxiety, is less clear, and recipients of living-donor (LD) organs may have a different psychological outcome from recipients of dead-donor (DD) organs. Design/methodology/approach In total, 152 patients were included and analyzed using a cross-sectional design. Of these patients, 25 were pre-KT, 13 were post-KT with a LD transplant and 114 were post-KT with a DD transplant. The patients were tested for a variety of psychometric outcomes using the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, the 12-Item Short Form Health Survey (assessing physical and mental health-related quality of life), the Resilience Scale, the Coping Self-Questionnaire and the Social Support Questionnaire. Findings The mean age of the patients was 51.25 years and 40 per cent of the patients were female. As expected, the post-KT patients had significantly better scores on the physical component of the Short Form Health Survey than the pre-KT patients, and there were no significant differences between the two post-KT groups. There were no significant differences among the groups in any of the other psychometric outcome parameters tested, including anxiety, depression and the mental component of health-related quality of life. Research limitations/implications KT and the origin of the donor organ do not appear to have a significant impact on the psychological well-being of transplant patients with CKD. Although the diagnosis and early treatment of psychological symptoms, such as depression and anxiety, remain important for these patients, decisions regarding KT, including the mode of transplantation, should not be fundamentally influenced by concerns about psychological impairments at the population level. Originality/value CKD is a serious condition involving profound impairment of the physical and psychological well-being of patients. KT is considered the treatment of choice for most of these patients. KT has notable advantages over dialysis with regard to the long-term physical functioning of the renal and cardiovascular system and increases the life expectancy of patients. However, the data on the improvement of psychological impairments after KT are less conclusive.

Sickness Symptoms in Kidney Transplant Recipients: A Scoping Review

“…The remaining 36 studies employed cross-sectional designs. Three involved analyses of secondary data from previous primary studies that employed either a longitudinal prospective design (Klewitz et al, 2019; Koller et al, 2010) or a cross-sectional design (Müller et al, 2020).…”

Factors associated with frailty in kidney transplant recipients: A cross‐sectional study

“…The scale ranges from 0 to 7 (no anxiety or depression); 8 to 10 (probable presence of anxiety or depression); >10 (definite presence of anxiety or depression). This scale has demonstrated good reliability and validity in outpatients (Yang et al, 2014), including KT recipients (Müller et al, 2020). The Chinese-translated version of HADS (Ye & Xu, 1993) was used in this study.…”

Psychosocial Dimensions in Hemodialysis Patients on Kidney Transplant Waiting List: Preliminary Data

“…Mood, anxiety and stress-related disorders have been found the most common psychiatric conditions in this population, with a prevalence ranging between 10 and 60% [10][11][12]. These disorders can be associated with potential co-morbidity, functional impairment, reduced adherence to medical care, quality of life and a negative impact on post-transplantation period [13][14][15].…”