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Infection-related deaths after kidney transplantation drop by half in longitudinal Finnish study
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The risk of infection-related deaths after kidney transplantation dropped by about half since the 1990s in Finland, according to a study that appears in the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology.
“In this study, we looked at the current infectious mortality after kidney transplantation in Finland. To our surprise, despite transplanting older and sicker patients and using more powerful immunosuppression, infectious mortality has dropped by almost half since the 1990s.” Ilkka Helanterä, MD, PhD, co-author of the study from the Helsinki University Hospital, told Healio Nephrology. “Interestingly, [a] majority of the infectious deaths occurred late, several years after transplantation; and in [less than] 80% of the cases, infectious deaths were caused by conventional bacterial infections, whereas mortality to opportunistic infections was low.”
Researchers analyzed 3,249 adult recipients of a first kidney transplant from 1990 to 2012, and mortality rates for infections were compared between 1990 to 1999 and 2000 to 2012.
Investigators found 953 patients died. Of these, 204 were infection-related. The more recent cohort showed a lower mortality rate per 1,000 patient-years compared to the older cohort (4.6 vs. 9.1).
Infectious mortality incidence rate ratio was 0.51. Septicemia and pulmonary infections were the main causes of infectious death at 38% and 45%, respectively. Of all the deaths that occurred, 83 were within the first year after transplantation and 23 of these were related to infection. – by Jake Scott
Disclosures: The authors report no relevant financial disclosures.
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