Renal Transplantations in African Americans: A Single-center Experience of Outcomes and Innovations to Improve Access and Results

Objective To report a single-center 10-year experience of outcomes of kidney transplantation in African Americans (AAs) vs Caucasian Americans (CA) and to propose ways in which to improve kidney transplant outcomes in AAs, increased access to kidney transplantation, prevention of kidney disease, and acceptance of organ donor registration rates in AAs. Methods We compared outcomes of deceased donor (DD) and living donor (LD) renal transplantation in AAs vs CAs in 772 recipients of first allografts at our transplant center from January 1995 to March 2004. For DD and LD transplants, no significant differences in gender, age, body mass index, or transplant panel reactive antibody (PRA) existed between AA and CA recipients. Results Primary diagnosis of hypertension was more common in AA, DD, and LD recipients. Significant differences for DD transplants included Medicaid insurance in 23% AA compared with 7.0% CA ( P P  = .0009). Eighty-three percent of AAs had received hemodialysis compared with 72% of CAs ( P  = .02). AAs endured significantly longer pretransplant dialysis (911 ± 618 vs 682 ± 526 days CA, P  = .0006) and greater time on the waiting list (972 ± 575 vs 637 ± 466 days CA, P P P  = .0003). In both LD and DD transplants, patient survival was similar for AAs and CAs. Conclusion Our data show that AAs receiving allografts from LDs have equivalent short- and long-term outcomes to CAs, but AAs have worse short- and long-term outcomes after DD transplantation. As such, we conclude that AAs should be educated about prevention of kidney disease, the importance of organ donor registration, the merits of LD over DD, and encouraged to seek LD options.