Prospective Randomized Trial to Evaluate the Efficacy of Donor Preconditioning With Dopamine on Initial Graft Function After Kidney Transplantation

During the transplantation process, the kidney graft is exposed to numerous events which may in turn lead to function deteriorations. In particular, factors related with brain death, like hemodynamic instability and systemic release of cytokines, cold preservation upon harvesting, and reperfusion injury accumulate in harm conveying a pro-inflammatory state to the graft before transplantation. Early graft dysfunction has long-term consequences. Renal transplants with delayed graft function and acute rejection have a greater incidence of chronic dysfunction. Allorecognition is induced when the host immune system detects alloantigens in the context of danger signals. Reducing danger signals through medical donor management may therefore have a considerable impact on the transplantation outcomes.

In a case control study from the Transplantation Center of Mannheim, Germany, donor use of both dopamine and noradrenaline during intensive care before organ retrieval was associated with less acute rejection episodes after transplantation and resulted in superior long-term graft survival. Donor employment of catecholamines remained predictive of an improved graft survival probability even after controlling for various confounding factors like age, gender, cold ischemia, HLA matching and immunosuppressive medication. This observation has been confirmed by a larger retrospective cohort study based on the Eurotransplant registry, including 2404 kidney transplants performed at 47 renal transplantation centers in 1993. The salutary effect on the graft function rate at 4 years exhibited a dose-response relationship and compared in quantitative terms with prospective HLA matching on class I or II antigens. Besides these long-term benefits, donor preconditioning with dopamine is associated with improvements of immediate graft function after kidney transplantation. Donor dopamine was associated with less requirement of hemodialysis and more rapid recovery of graft function posttransplant in a single centre study involving 254 consecutive renal transplant recipients.

Implementing dopamine as a therapeutic tool in the management of cadaver kidney donors may have a major impact on both immediate graft function and long-term graft survival without adverse side effects for the recipients.