The effect of body mass index on renal transplantation outcomes

Renal transplantation is the eligible treatment of end stage renal disease. There are many factors that effect renal transplant outcomes. Obesity is shown to have immunologic role beside its effects on many systems. Recently, there are many studies on the effect of the immune role of adipose tissue on transplantation. In this study, we planned to compare renal transplantion outcomes (graft function, graft survival, acute rejection episodes and postoperative complications) of patients with BMI< 25 to patients with BMI>25. In our study, a retrospective analysis was undertaken of 323 consecutive patients who received a renal transplant at Baskent University Ankara Hospital General Surgery Clinic from March 2005 to September 2014. Kaplan-Meier method was used to determine the survival rate, log rank was used to test to compare survival curves, and the independent association of BMI with survival was determined using Cox multivariate regression. Our results showed that frequency of acute rejection episodes were higher in patients with BMI>25. Overweight and obese patient had more severe postoperative complications than patient with BMI<25. there was a higher incidence of delayed graft function in owerweight and obese patients. Graft survival was significantly lower in patient with BMI>25 patients compared to patients with BMI<25 upon Kaplan–Meier analysis. There are many factors that impact renal transplant outcomes. Some of those factors are recipient related and others are donor related. It's also known that technical and clinical differences have an effect on this prosess. In our study, we showed that body mass index is a independent risk factor on renal transplant outcomes but further studies are needed to confirm these findings on the role of adipose tissue on transplantation immunology.