Introduction: Living Kidney Transplantation (LKT) has provided a means of increasing the organ pool for patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD). Surgical practices vary regarding the use of the same surgeon (SS) vs. different surgeons (DS) to perform LKT donor and recipient operations. We hypothesized there is no difference in patient and graft survival in LKT with the use of the same surgeon vs. different surgeons for donor and recipient operations.

Methods: We conducted a retrospective cohort study of consecutive adult LKT from October 2011 through December 2015. The difference in continuous variables across compared groups was assessed using the Mann-Whitney U test. Binary variables were compared using chi-square test. Kaplan Meier with the log-rank test was used for time to event analysis. Statistical significance was set at 5% for all comparisons.

Results: There were 159 LK transplants performed (47 SS vs. 112 DS). There were no statistically significant differences between the SS and DS groups when analyzed for OR utilization time (P=.056), CIT (P=.370), LOS, (P=.992), or DGF (P=.505). There was also no statistically significant difference in 18 month graft survival (P=.632) or patient survival (P=.359).

Conclusion: Our results indicate similar outcomes for graft and patient survival when the donor and recipient surgeries for LKT were performed by the same surgeon vs. different surgeons. These findings suggest transplant programs can safely use either the same or different surgeons to perform the donor and recipient surgeries for living kidney transplants based on preference and availability of staff. Future large multicenter studies are needed to further validate these conclusions.

CITATION INFORMATION: Sokolich J., Buggs J., Mahon D., Rogers E., Bowers V. Outcomes in Living Kidney Transplant Donor and Recipient Operations with Same vs. Different Surgeons Am J Transplant. 2017;17 (suppl 3).

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