Serotyping for Homotransplantation

During the past four years 104 patients who had received kidneys from either living unrelated or cadaver donors were typed and analyzed, to assess the effect of matching on endogenous creatinine clearance, rejection grades, current overall clinical status and duration of graft survival. Of those whose current survival exceeds three months, the matched group had a mean creatinine clearance of 78.5 ± 23.6 as compared with 50.1 ± 26.4 ml per minute in the mismatched group (p equal to 0.005), in which clearance tended to deteriorate after relatively long periods of comparative stability. Matched patients were also clinically superior (p equal to 0.02) and less prone to multiple or severe rejection episodes (p equal to 0.001). Although early survival was not influenced, survival was better in the matched group after the first year. Matchings on the basis of 5 HL-A antigens thus correlates with outcome of transplantation from unrelated donors, as is true in related donors.