What is it about?
People think of smoking as causing lung cancer and heart disease. But in patients who must take medications for transplant organ rejection, smoking may also cause death from other causes. Our goal was to find out the effect of smoking on transplant kidney function, and deaths from all causes.
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Why is it important?
This is one of the largest databases available from a very large international trial of patients who have had successful kidney transplants. Among these patients, those that continued to smoke had double the risk of death from non-cardiovascular causes, 70% greater risk of any kind of death and a 50% greater risk of losing transplanted kidney function (return to dialysis) than those who had quit smoking former smokers.
Perspectives
We have limited numbers of kidneys donated each year, and long waiting lists for patients with kidney failure on dialysis. As organs are limited, we should be sure to make the best of our supply.Perhaps it is time to deny transplants to those patients who continue to smoke?
Larry Weinrauch
Harvard Medical School
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Smoking and outcomes in kidney transplant recipients: a post hoc survival analysis of the FAVORIT trial, International Journal of Nephrology and Renovascular Disease, April 2018, Dove Medical Press,
DOI: 10.2147/ijnrd.s161001.
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