Is delayed graft function causally associated with long-term outcomes after kidney transplantation? Instrumental variable analysis.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Although some studies have found an association between delayed graft function (DGF) after kidney transplantation and worse long-term outcomes, a causal relationship remains controversial. We investigated this relationship using an instrumental variables model (IVM), a quasi-randomization technique for drawing causal inferences.

Methods

We identified 80,690 adult, deceased-donor, kidney-only transplant recipients from the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients between 1997 and 2010. We used cold ischemia time (CIT) as an instrument to test the hypothesis that DGF causes death-censored graft failure and mortality at 1 and 5 years after transplantation, controlling for an array of characteristics known to affect patient and graft survival. We compared our IVM

SUBMITTER: Butala NM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3629374 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature