Hypersensitized candidates to kidney transplantation in Portugal

• Autor(a) principal: Lima, Bruno A.
• Data de Publicação: 2013
• Outros Autores: Miguel, Mendes, Alves, Helena
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.18/2097
• topic: Transplantação Renal; Portugal

[ENG] The presence of donor specific anti-HLA antibodies is generally a contraindication for transplantation and nowadays the identification of these antibodies are part of most pre-transplantation evaluations. In Portugal, the implemented protocol for registration and maintenance of the active list for kidney transplant includes a complement -dependent cytotoxity (CDC) panel-reactive antibody (PRA) screening method, and Luminex technology for detecting and characterizing HLA alloantibodies. Under the current Portuguese kidney allocation system from deceased donors, implemented in August 2007, deceased donor kidneys are primarily allocated via ABO identical and time on dialysis with extra points to hyperimmunized patients, namely PRA CDC > 50%. Additional risk for the candidate or transplant organ can be represented by a proposed calculated PRA (cPRA) based upon unacceptable HLA antigens detected by Luminex to which the patient has been sensitized. These unacceptable HLA antigens used to generate cPRA represents a virtual crossmatch (XM). Sensitized patients are less likely to be matched with a suitable donor organ. Even after clearing the hurdle of procuring a living donor, it is still possible that this is not sufficient due to the likelihood of having an XM-positive. In such cases, and in the presence of incompatible blood type between recipients and their intended living donors, kidney paired donation (KPD) can provide an answer to this catch by facilitating exchanges between willing donors kidneys. A national Portuguese KPD programme, when realized, may prevent the current loss of a significant number of suitable living donors and reduce waiting list time for a deceased donor. An upgrade of a suggested point system in a Portuguese KPD programme will be the use of cPRA instead of the values of PRA CDC. In Portugal, the virtual XM approach just represents the optimization of an existent technique.