*Purpose: Solid organ transplantation remains the preferred treatment for patients with end stage organ diseases. In 2018 alone, 36, 527 organ transplants were performed in the United States. These patients are at an increased risk for infectious complications due to long-term immunosuppression. We sought to determine whether kidney transplant patients who undergo abdominal procedures have an increased risk of complications.

*Methods: A retrospective analysis was performed using data from 2002-2014 from the National Inpatient Sample (NIS) data from HCUP. NIS is the largest publicly available all-payer inpatient healthcare database in the United States and provides national estimates of hospital in-patient stays (HCUP).For each year, patients who had a prior kidney transplant and had subsequent admission for specific abdominal procedures including – ostomy, gastrectomy, small bowel resection, appendectomy, cholecystectomy and common duct exploration, laparoscopy (GI only), exploratory laparotomy, were analyzed for infections such as – septicemia, bacterial infection (unspecified site), mycoses, viral infection, acute posthemorrhagic anemia and pneumonia.Data analyses were performed using IBM SPSS version 26 and a cross tabs analysis and chi-square test was performed in order to obtain a p-value.

*Results: Two major data sets examined: 2002-2006 and 2007-2014. In the first data set 15,588 kidney transplant recipients were studied. 1,274 kidney recipients underwent abdominal procedures and 338 developed infectious complications. In the second data set, 28,309 patients underwent renal transplantation and the number of patients undergoing abdominal procedures was 2,037. Acute posthemorrhagic anemia was the most common complication experienced by the kidney transplant patients at 3.57% . The majority of the patients survived their hospital stay at 99.4% , and had a routine discharge at 85.2%. The median length of stay was 6 days.Cross tabs and chi square analysis between the variables showed a statistically significant difference for transplant patients who had an abdominal procedure and/or an infectious complication, respectively.

*Conclusions: While there were only slight differences between the mortality, length of stay, and patient disposition, there is a significant morbidity associated with abdominal surgery in kidney transplant recipients. These patients experience significantly more infectious complications pointing to the need for increased chemoprophylaxis for these abdominal procedures in the kidney transplant recipient population.

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