Renal artery anastomosis to internal and external iliac artery in kidney transplant patients

ABSTRACT

To verify what is the best technique, we performed a comparison between two techniques of renal artery anastomosis in kidney transplant patients, including end-to-end and end-to-side anastomosis. A cohort study has been performed including 76 patients suffering from end-stage renal disease, who have been undergone kidney transplantation from living donors in our kidney transplantation unit. We divided the patients randomizely into two groups, the first one contained the patients with end-to-end anastomosis to internal iliac artery, the second contained end-to-side anastomosis to external or common iliac artery. Clinical and surgical complications in addition to graft and patient survival have been evaluated. No differences in clinical and surgical complications were noted between the two groups in the primary hospitalization period [p=0.42, p=0.65], creatinine clearance was similar also [p=0.88]. One-year postoperative analysis showed similar results regarding graft and patient survival [p=0.25, p=0.82], and creatinine clearance [p=0.75]. Erectile dysfunction rate was higher in end-to-end anastomosis. The follow up demonstrated similar results in the two groups with one exception regarding erectile dysfunction [ED] rate which was higher in end-to-end anastomosis group. We think that a larger double blinded prospective study is more capable, if it is done in the future, to answer the main question in this study [what is the best technique?], in the meantime we recommend doing end-to-side renal artery anastomosis