[Kidney paired donation. Combination with extracorporeal desensitization].

BACKGROUND

Live kidney donation represents the gold standard for renal replacement therapy. Due to ABO and HLA incompatibility between donor and recipient pairs, one third of possible transplantations cannot be performed. Kidney exchange programs in combination with extracorporeal desensitization have been introduced to enable successful kidney transplantation in such circumstances.

OBJECTIVE

This review discusses the current indications, methods, ethical problems and results within such programs.

MATERIALS AND

METHODS

Relevant Medline articles were analyzed and personal experiences of the authors are included in this article.

RESULTS

Kidney exchange programs in combination with extracorporeal desensitization enable successful transplantation for most patients.

DISCUSSION: The best combinations of existing strategies have to be defined and newly arisen ethical questions have to be answered.