Impact of Vascular Variations on Living Donor Kidney Transplantation

Background: Kidney transplantation is the best treatment for end-stage chronic kidney disease. However, its realization is confronted by several difficulties among which are anatomical variations. Objective: The objective of our work was to describe the impact of renal pedicle variations on the operative procedure as well as the complications. Method: We conducted a retrospective study on living kidney donors and their recipients in the period from 2012 to 2017. Several variables were studied, in particular socio-demographic, operative and progression. Results: We identified 49 living donors whose mean age was 37.59 years with a male-to-female ratio of 3.9 and 45 ± 10.75 years in the recipients. The prevalence of renal vascular abnormalities was higher with a proportion of 46.94% in recipients. The left kidney was most frequently removed (75.51%) and then kept mainly in HTK (95.92%). These vascular anomalies were associated with a longer operating time but this difference was not statistically significant (p = 0.5804). They had no effect on hot and cold ischemia times (p = 0.9838, p = 0.8389). Complications were observed in 11 patients, all recipients, i.e. 11.22%, and were not related to the presence of vascular abnormalities (p = 0.086). We observed that 4.08% of deaths were all recipients. Conclusion: It seems that kidney transplantation with multiple renal arteries and/or veins does not significantly lengthen the operating time and does not promote the onset of complications.