Impact of recipient obesity on living donor kidney transplant outcomes: a single-center experience

The number of overweight and obese patients undergoing renal transplantation has drastically increased in the last two decades. Studies on graft survival and complication rates of these obese patients have had conflicting results, with some reporting a significant risk and others reporting relatively good outcomes. We examined 1-year outcomes in obese and nonobese patients who underwent living donor transplants at our transplant program, a slightly different approach than prior studies of deceased donor transplants into patients with high body mass index (BMI). The mean serum creatinine clearance by the modified MDRD equation at the end of 1 year in the nonobese group was 58.9 mL/min whereas the mean creatinine clearance in the obese group was 48.9 mL/min (P = .09). The length of stay, incidence of delayed graft function, and 1-year graft survival did not differ between the obese and nonobese groups. The results of this single-center experience with living donor transplant into obese subjects suggest no differences in outcomes with regard to surgical or wound complications, delayed graft function, or serum creatinine at 1 year.