Outcome of marginal donors and recipients in living donor renal transplantation: A single-center study

Objective The primary objective of this study was to identify the donors who were marginal or complex living donors, and the secondary objective was to compare the donor and recipient outcomes in renal transplants involving marginal versus nonmarginal donors. Patients and methods A retrospective analysis of the records of the voluntary kidney donors and patients with chronic kidney disease who underwent living donor renal transplantation from January 2012 to September 2020 was conducted. A total of 205 adult renal transplants were included in the study. The donors were categorized as marginal or complex living donors based on the presence of one or more of the following criteria: Age 60 years or more, body mass index (BMI) more than 30, glomerular filtration rate (GFR) Results The mean age of the donors was 45.23 years. 35 (17.1%) donors were male and 170 (82.9%) were female. The mean BMI of the donors was 25.29. The mean duration of hospitalization for donor nephrectomy was 4.39 days. A total of 73 (35.60%) donors were found to be marginal. The most common cause for being a marginal donor was a BMI of more than 30. The mean estimated GFR of recipients was lower in the marginal (54.68) group than in the nonmarginal group (60.71), but the difference was not statistically significant (P - 0.083). Conclusions Marginal kidney donors have similar short-term outcomes as optimal donors, and the graft function at 2 years' follow-up was also comparable in the marginal and nonmarginal groups.