Preface

Renal transplantation is the treatment of choice for patients with end-stage renal disease and until now half a million renal transplants are done by surgeons, nephrologists, immunolo‐ gists, nurses and patients.

This open-access book covers diagnostic methods as well as clinical aspects and advances in transplantation immunology. The area covered spans from imaging methods, impact of do‐ nor factors, clinical comorbidities to recent developments in HLA-Matching and Antibody-Mediated rejection.

The authors are all experienced clinicians and scientists from different regions of the world. So, this book may help us all by giving useful information to improve care for our patients.

> **Dr. med. Thomas Rath** Department of Nephrology and Transplantation Medicine Westpfalz-Klinikum, Kaiserslautern, Germany

**Section 1**

**Diagnostic Methods in Renal Transplantation**

**Diagnostic Methods in Renal Transplantation**

**Chapter 1**

**Medical Evaluation of the Adult Kidney Transplant**

Prior to the formal evaluation process, all potential transplant candidates are encouraged to attend a "patient education" session. At the meeting, patients are informed about the medical and surgical risks and benefits of renal transplantation, the necessity for frequent outpatient visits in the early postoperative period, the potential adverse effects of immunosuppression, and the importance of compliance with immunosuppressive therapy. The potential advan‐ tages and disadvantages of deceased *versus* living donor renal transplantation are discussed with the patients, and when possible, with their family members, significant others, and/or friends. Other issues that are addressed include prolonged waiting time for a deceased donor transplant due to the critical shortage of donor organ and adverse effects of waiting time on patient and graft survival. In addition, patients are forewarned that various medical and psychosocial conditions may preclude a patient from being a transplant candidate. Absolute

and relative contraindications to kidney transplantation are outlined in table (1).

The routine assessment of a renal transplant candidate includes a detailed history and a thorough physical exam. In particular, it is important to search for the etiology of the original kidney disease as it can predict the transplant course and outcome and the risk for disease recurrence. When available, the kidney biopsy report should be reviewed and the risk of

and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

© 2013 Pham et al.; licensee InTech. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use,

© 2013 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution,

distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

**Candidate**

Phuong-Thu Pham, Son V. Pham,

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/54736

**1. Introduction**

**1.1. Patient education**

**1.2. General assessment**

*1.2.1. Medical / urological evaluation*

Phuong-Anh Pham and Phuong-Chi Pham

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter
