Kidney transplantation from living donors genetically related or unrelated to the recipients: a single-center analysis.

Living-donor programs have gradually become an attractive strategy to expand the donor pool for kidney transplantation (KT). Grafts from living-related donors (LRD) display superior function and longer survival than those obtained from cadaveric sources. Recent reports have shown that outcomes from living-unrelated donors (LUD) are not worse than those from LRD. In this study, we evaluated 135 procedures using living donors performed in our center between 1987 and 2010 (LRD: n = 111; LUD: n = 24). Among the LRD, most donors were mothers (n = 61; 54.95\%), fathers (n = 25; 22.52\%), and sisters (n = 16; 14.41\%). The LUD included wives (n = 17; 70.83\%) and husbands (n = 7; 29.17\%). The mean recipient ages for LRD versus LUD were 26.94 ± 13.51 and 50.04 ± 8.86 years, respectively (P < .0001). The recipient female/male distribution was 33/78 (29.73\%/70.27\%) for the LRD versus 6/18 (25\%/75\%) for the LUD group (P = .643). The donor age was 48.79 ± 9 years in LRD and 49.25 ± 8.44 years in LUD (P = .696). The donor female/male distribution was 72/39 (64.86\%/35.16\%) in LRD and 17/7 (70.83\%/29.17\%) in LUD (P = .576). The follow up was 123.79 ± 87.87 months (range, 0.91-279.93). Overall patient and graft survivals were 94.1\% and 67.6\%, respectively. There was no significant difference in patient survival after stratifying for donor type (LRD: 93.9\%; LUD: 95.8\%; P = .961) or in graft survival after stratifying for donor type (LRD: 63.8\%; LUD: 87.8\%; P = .124). Entering donor type as an independent variable in a univariate Cox regression, we observed no significance for either recipient (P = .961) or graft survival (P = .142). The results of this study suggest that LUD utilization should be encouraged in KT programs.