Hypothermic Oxygenated Machine Perfusion of Extended Criteria Kidney Allografts From Brain Death Donors

Kidney transplantation (KT) has emerged as the mainstay of treatment for end-stage kidney disease. In an effort to address the widening gap between demand and supply of donor organs, there has been an increase in the numbers of "marginal" or functionally impaired renal allografts that had to be accepted for KT over the decades. The use of extended criteria donor (ECD) allografts is associated with a higher incidence of primary graft non-function (PNF) and/or delayed graft function (DGF). Hypothermic oxygenated machine perfusion (HOPE) has been successfully tested in pre-clinical experiments and in a few clinical series of donation after cardiac death (DCD) in liver transplantation. The present trial is an investigator-initiated pilot study on the effects of HOPE on ECD-allografts in donation after brain death (DBD) KT. Fifteen kidney allografts will be submitted to 2 hours of HOPE before implantation and are going to be compared to a case matched group transplanted after conventional cold storage (CCS).