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Reasons for Match Offer Refusals and Efforts to Reduce Them in the OPTN/UNOS Kidney Paired Donation Pilot Program (KPDPP)

R. Leishman,1 D. Stewart,1 A. Kucheryavaya,1 L. Robbins Callahan,1 T. Sandholm,2 M. Aeder.3

1UNOS, Richmond, VA
2Carnegie Mellon Univ, Pittsburgh, PA
3Univ Hosp Case Med Ctr, Cleveland, OH.

Meeting: 2015 American Transplant Congress

Abstract number: 466

Keywords: Alloantibodies, Highly-sensitized, Histocompatibility antigens, Kidney transplantation

Session Information

Session Name: Concurrent Session: Kidney: Living Donor Issues III

Session Type: Concurrent Session

Date: Tuesday, May 5, 2015

Session Time: 4:00pm-5:30pm

 Presentation Time: 5:00pm-5:12pm

Location: Terrace I-III

Background: The OPTN/UNOS KPDPP has been finding 2-way, 3-way, and chain exchanges since Oct 2010. Though the number of pairs entered, matches found, and transplants performed grew markedly in 2013-2014, the match failure rate remains stubbornly high, with only 8% of matches resulting in a transplant. The OPTN/UNOS Kidney Transplantation Committee and KPD Work Group are exploring ways to improve match success rates and increase the number of transplants through KPD.

Methods: Using OPTN data, we analyzed the 332 match offers made by the KPDPP in Jan-Sep 2014 that did not result in transplant. Since some failed matches were refused due to multiple reasons, reported percentages do not sum to 100%. Repaired matches were excluded.

Results: 52% (n=172) of failed matches were actually accepted by the candidate's transplant hospital but could not proceed due to a refusal of another match in the exchange. In 12 cases, the candidate had a negative (or acceptable) crossmatch (XM) result. Of the remaining 48% (n=160) that were refused, 32.6% were due to XM-related issues, often involving candidate antibodies to DQB or DPB. 34.4% were concerns about the donor's age, medical history, or other donor factors. 21.9% involved candidate issues, most notably competing match offers from other KPD programs (Fig 1).

Conclusions: The failed KPDPP exchanges were most often due to donor specific antibodies, donor age or medical history, or a candidate having another transplant opportunity. Some declines were unavoidable; others (donor age, BMI, unacceptable antigens) may have been averted through more deliberate use of offer acceptance criteria or the donor pre-select tool. Efforts to reduce decline rates include investigating potentially avoidable refusals (e.g., survey to hospitals that report a XM-related refusal), optimizing the donor pre-select tool's effectiveness, and developing a comprehensive set of OPTN KPD histocompatibility requirements. We are also considering optimization algorithm changes such as failure-aware matching.

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To cite this abstract in AMA style:

Leishman R, Stewart D, Kucheryavaya A, Callahan LRobbins, Sandholm T, Aeder M. Reasons for Match Offer Refusals and Efforts to Reduce Them in the OPTN/UNOS Kidney Paired Donation Pilot Program (KPDPP) [abstract]. Am J Transplant. 2015; 15 (suppl 3). https://atcmeetingabstracts.com/abstract/reasons-for-match-offer-refusals-and-efforts-to-reduce-them-in-the-optnunos-kidney-paired-donation-pilot-program-kpdpp/. Accessed May 9, 2025.

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