Treatment of borderline infiltrates with minimal inflammation in kidney transplant recipients has no effect on allograft or patient outcomes.

In 2005, the Banff committee expanded the "borderline changes" category to include lesions with minimal (<10%) inflammation: "i0" borderline infiltrates. Clinical significance and optimal treatment of i0 borderline infiltrates are not known. Data suggest that i0 borderline infiltrates may have a more favorable prognosis than borderline infiltrates with higher grades of interstitial inflammation. In this single-center, retrospective, observational study, we assessed 90 renal transplant recipients with i0 borderline infiltrates on biopsies indicated for graft dysfunction. We studied the impact of treatment with corticosteroids on allograft function, allograft survival, and patient survival. We found no differences between treated and untreated groups with respect to eGFR at 4 weeks and 6 months after biopsy. Follow-up biopsies, available in 67% of patients, were negative for rejection in almost half of all cases, regardless of treatment status. The frequencies of persistent borderline infiltrates (38%) and higher-grade T cell-mediated rejection (1A or greater, 14%) on follow-up biopsies were similar between the two groups. There were no differences in rejection-free allograft survival, death-censored graft failure, or patient mortality among treated vs non-treated i0 borderline patients. Our findings suggest that the natural history of i0 borderline infiltrates, in relatively low immunologic risk patients, is not affected by corticosteroid treatment.

Donor's APOL1 Risk Genotype and "Second Hits" Associated With De Novo Collapsing Glomerulopathy in Deceased Donor Kidney Transplant Recipients: A Report of 5 Cases.

The presence of 2 APOL1 risk variants (G1/G1, G1/G2, or G2/G2) is an important predictor of focal segmental glomerulosclerosis (FSGS) and chronic kidney disease in individuals of African descent. Although recipient APOL1 genotype is not associated with allograft survival, kidneys from deceased African American donors with 2 APOL1 risk variants demonstrate shorter graft survival. We present a series of cases of presumed de novo collapsing FSGS in 5 transplanted kidneys from 3 deceased donors later identified as carrying 2 APOL1 risk alleles, including 2 recipients from the same donor whose kidneys were transplanted in 2 different institutions. Four of these recipients had viremia in the period preceding the diagnosis of collapsing FSGS. Cytomegalovirus and BK virus infection were present in 3 and 1 of our 5 cases, respectively, around the time that collapsing FSGS occurred. We discuss viral infections, including active cytomegalovirus infection, as possible "second hits" that may lead to glomerular injury and allograft failure in these recipients. Further studies to identify additional second hits are necessary to better understand the pathologic mechanisms of donor APOL1-associated kidney disease in the recipient.

Chylous ascites following laparoscopic live donor nephrectomy: A new improved treatment paradigm.

Chylous ascites is a difficult, albeit uncommon complication of laparoscopic live donor nephrectomy (LLDN). Lymphatic leak is believed to be a result of injury to the cisterna chyli, regional lymph nodes, or other peri-aortic lymphatics intraoperatively. Recommended management with dietary modifications can result in malnutrition and immunodeficiency. We present four patients who developed chylous ascites following LLDN. Approach to these patients evolved over time. Our initial two patients were successfully treated with a combination of surgical intervention followed by drain placement, after the failure of conservative management. The latter two cases were successfully treated with prompt intra-abdominal drain placement, without dietary modifications. Our cohort challenges the standard of care for treatment of chylous ascites after LLDN. We believe that prompt diagnosis and placement of an intra-abdominal drain can be used safely in select patients that develop this complication. We hypothesize that continuously draining the lymphatic leak, thus avoiding the re-accumulation of ascites, allows bowel and mesentery to make contact and adhere to the retroperitoneal tissue. We believe that prompt, initial, percutaneous drain placement is a viable alternative to both conservative and reoperative management in the treatment of chylous ascites after LLDN and should be considered as a reasonable first-line therapy.

Therapeutic living donor nephrectomy.

Therapeutic living donor nephrectomy is defined as a nephrectomy that is performed as therapy for an underlying medical condition. The patient directly benefits from having their kidney removed, but the kidney is deemed transplantable. The kidney is subsequently used as an allograft for an individual with advanced renal disease. Therapeutic donor nephrectomy can be successfully utilized for a heterogenous cohort of disease processes as both treatment for the donor and to increase the number of suitable organs available for transplantation. We describe four cases of therapeutic donor nephrectomy that were performed at our institution. Of the four cases, two patients elected to undergo therapeutic donor nephrectomy as treatment for loin pain hematuria syndrome; one after blunt abdominal trauma that resulted in complete proximal ureteral avulsion; and the fourth after being diagnosed with a small renal mass. Based on our data presented to the United Network for Organ Sharing Board of Directors (UNOS) in December 2015, living donor evaluation has been made simpler for patients electing to undergo therapeutic donor nephrectomy. UNOS eliminated the requirement for a psychosocial evaluation for these patients. As the organ shortage continues to limit transplantation, therapeutic donor nephrectomy should be considered when appropriate.

Outcomes for potential kidney transplant recipients offered public health service increased risk kidneys: A single-center experience.

BACKGROUND: Discard rate of Public Health Service Increased Risk (PHS-IR) organs is high despite the absence of worse kidney transplant outcomes. METHODS: We conducted a retrospective, single-center study of PHS-IR kidney offers made to kidney transplant-only potential recipients from 6/2004 to 5/2015. Overall mortality and transplant outcomes between potential recipients were stratified by response to PHS-IR kidney offers. Cox regression and Kaplan-Meier analyses of mortality and allograft failure were performed. RESULTS: A total of 2423 potential recipients were offered a PHS-IR kidney, with 1502 transplanted, with or without a PHS-IR kidney. Predictors of accepting a PHS-IR kidney included higher Estimated Post Transplant Survival (EPTS) score, prior kidney transplant, and lower educational achievement on multivariable analysis (P = 0.025, P = 0.004, P = 0.023). A positive response to a PHS-IR kidney was associated with lower risk of mortality (3.63% vs 11.6%; aHR 0.467, P = 0.0008). PHS-IR kidney recipients had decreased risk of allograft loss compared to non-PHS-IR recipients (P = 0.007), though mortality outcomes were not significantly different based on PHS-IR status (P = 0.38). No transmission of HIV, HBV, or HCV occurred from PHS-IR kidney donors in this cohort. CONCLUSIONS: Efforts must be made to increase awareness of the beneficial outcomes of PHS-IR organs to maximize appropriate donor allocation.

Content Coverage Evaluation of the OMOP Vocabulary on the Transplant Domain Focusing on Concepts Relevant for Kidney Transplant Outcomes Analysis.

BACKGROUND: Improving outcomes of transplant recipients within and across transplant centers is important with the increasing number of organ transplantations being performed. The current practice is to analyze the outcomes based on patient level data submitted to the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS). Augmenting the UNOS data with other sources such as the electronic health record will enrich the outcomes analysis, for which a common data model (CDM) can be a helpful tool for transforming heterogeneous source data into a uniform format. OBJECTIVES: In this study, we evaluated the feasibility of representing concepts from the UNOS transplant registry forms with the Observational Medical Outcomes Partnership (OMOP) CDM vocabulary to understand the content coverage of OMOP vocabulary on transplant-specific concepts. METHODS: Two annotators manually mapped a total of 3,571 unique concepts extracted from the UNOS registry forms to concepts in the OMOP vocabulary. Concept mappings were evaluated by (1) examining the agreement among the initial two annotators and (2) investigating the number of UNOS concepts not mapped to a concept in the OMOP vocabulary and then classifying them. A subset of mappings was validated by clinicians. RESULTS: There was a substantial agreement between annotators with a kappa score of 0.71. We found that 55.5% of UNOS concepts could not be represented with OMOP standard concepts. The majority of unmapped UNOS concepts were categorized into transplant, measurement, condition, and procedure concepts. CONCLUSION: We identified categories of unmapped concepts and found that some transplant-specific concepts do not exist in the OMOP vocabulary. We suggest that adding these missing concepts to OMOP would facilitate further research in the transplant domain.