Chronic Allograft Nephropathy

Long-term survival of kidney transplants (renal allografts) has changed little during the past decade, despite dramatic improvements in short-term survival. Most late renal allograft loss, other than that associated with the death of the patient, has been attributed to progressive renal dysfunction, termed “chronic allograft nephropathy” (or CAN), a confusing term that lacks a rigorous consensus definition.Chronic allograft nephropathy entered prime time in 1993 as a category in the Banff diseases of kidney-transplant diseases that included at least four entities that could not always be differentiated on biopsy (chronic rejection, chronic toxic effects of cyclosporine; hypertensive vascular disease; and . . .