Short-Term Pretransplant Dialysis Does Not Affect Kidney Transplant Outcomes

FRIDAY, Aug. 28, 2026 (HealthDay News) — Allograft survival is unaffected when kidney transplant (KT) is performed after short-term pretransplant dialysis duration (PTDD), according to a study published online Aug. 24 in the International Journal of Urology.

Keisuke Maeda, from Hokkaido University Hospital in Sapporo, Japan, and colleagues examined the association between PTDD and KT outcomes in a Japanese cohort of 805 adult patients who underwent a living donor KT between 2001 and 2021.

The researchers found that the nonpreemptive kidney transplantation (non-PEKT) group had significantly lower allograft survival rates than the PEKT group (hazard ratio, 1.67). When PTDD was separated by years, two or more years of PTDD demonstrated the highest hazard ratio for allograft loss in a univariate analysis (hazard ratio, 1.67). In a multivariate analysis, suggested risk factors for allograft loss included two or more years of PTDD, being a male recipient, and having diabetic nephropathy (hazard ratios, 2.61, 2.35, and 2.94, respectively). Less than two years of PTDD resulted in significantly higher allograft survival rates; the 10-year allograft survival rates were 82.0 and 91.8 percent for recipients with two or more and less than two years of PTDD, respectively.

“Induction of dialysis does not seem to lower allograft survival if administered not long before kidney transplantation,” the authors write. “Therefore, if necessary, dialysis therapy should be initiated without hesitation before kidney transplantation.”

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