Association between procurement biopsy findings and deceased donor kidney outcomes: a paired kidney analysis

Abstract

Unfavourable procurement biopsy findings are the most common reason for deceased donor kidney discard in the United States. We sought to assess the association between biopsy findings and post‐transplant outcomes when donor characteristics are accounted for. We used registry data to identify 1566 deceased donors of 3132 transplanted kidneys (2015–2020) with discordant right/left procurement biopsy classification and performed time‐to‐event analyses to determine the association between optimal histology and hazard of death‐censored graft failure or death. We then repeated all analyses using a local cohort of 147 donors of kidney pairs with detailed procurement histology data available (2006–2016). Among transplanted kidney pairs in the national cohort, there were no significant differences in incidence of delayed graft function or primary nonfunction. Time to death‐censored graft failure was not significantly different between recipients of optimal versus suboptimal kidneys. Results were similar in analyses using the local cohort. Regarding recipient survival, analysis of the national, but not local, cohort showed optimal kidneys were associated with a lower hazard of death (adjusted HR 0.68, 95% CI 0.52–0.90, P = 0.006). In conclusion, in a large national cohort of deceased donor kidney pairs with discordant right/left procurement biopsy findings, we found no association between histology and death‐censored graft survival.