The Association of Time to Organ Procurement on Short- and Long-Term Outcomes in Kidney Transplantation

Abstract

Background and objectivesTransplant centers in Europe aim to minimize the time from brain death to organ procurement (procurement delay), but evidence to justify this is scarce. In the United States, procurement times are significantly longer. Our objective was to analyze how procurement delay associates with kidney allograft outcomes.Design, setting, participants, & measurementsKidney transplantations from brain-dead donors were retrospectively analyzed from the Finnish Kidney Transplant Registry and the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients in the United States. Multivariable models were adjusted with donor and recipient characteristics, and the relationship between procurement delay and outcomes was modeled with cubic spline functions.ResultsIn total, 2388 and 101,474 kidney transplantations in Finland and the United States were included, respectively. The median procurement delay was 9.8 hours (interquartile range, 7.8–12.4) in Finland and 34.8 hours (interquartile range, 26.3–46.3) in the United States. A nonlinear association was observed between procurement delay and the risk of delayed graft function, with highest risk seen in short and very long procurement delays. In multivariable models, the lowest risk of delayed graft function was associated with procurement delay between 20 and 50 hours. In multivariable models, longer procurement delay was linearly associated with lower risk of graft loss (hazard ratio, 0.90/1 h longer; 95% confidence interval, 0.88 to 0.92;P<0.001). Acute rejection rates, for which data were only available from Finland, were not associated with procurement delay.ConclusionsLonger procurement delay was associated with noninferior or even better kidney allograft outcomes.