Chronic renal failure in kidney transplant recipients. Do they receive optimum care?: Data from the UK renal registry

We report the prevalence of chronic kidney disease (CKD) and related complications in a national cohort of RTR (n = 9542), and compare this with dialysis patients. The majority of RTR were classified as having CKD stage 2T (21.6%) or 3T (57.5%) with 15.7% classified as CKD stage 4T and 3.1% as stage 5T. Only 2.1% of RTR were in CKD stage 1T. The proportion of patients with stage 4T and 5T CKD who lost their graft in the following year was 8% and 49%, respectively. The prevalence of anemia (hemoglobin < 11 g/dL) increased from 4.4% in stage 1T to 51.5% in stage 5T and compared with 30% in dialysis patients (p < 0.0001). Hypertension, hyperphosphatemia, elevated Ca x PO4, raised iPTH and hypoalbuminemia rose with increasing CKD stage. For many variables, the achievement of standards was lower in stage 5T RTR than in dialysis patients. There were center differences in median estimated glomerular filtration rate and percentage of patients with hemoglobin < 11 g/dL (p < 0.0001). In conclusion, many patients in stage 4T-5T have CKD-related complications that fall below targets established for nontransplant CKD patients. They are at increased risk of graft loss. More attention needs to be paid to managing these complications and preparing these patients for a return to dialysis and/or retransplantation.