**5. Early complications**

*Perioperative Care for Organ Transplant Recipient*

rebound hyperkalaemia postoperatively.

**4. Perioperative fluid management**

strategy should be avoided.

(ACTRN12617000358347).

urinary anastomotic leak (Section 5).

outcomes [46].

hyperkalaemia >6 mmol/L in the immediate post-operative period should prompt consideration of dialysis depending on the urine output. If graft urine output (with native residual renal function deducted) is >100 mL/h, it may be reasonable to manage the patient medically with insulin-dextrose infusion and loop diuretics. It should also be noted that intraoperative use of insulin-dextrose often results in

Optimal fluid management strategy is contentious, although there is good evidence that fluid loading to maintain cardiac output and optimise renal perfusion, improves outcomes [44]. Intra-operative blood losses and fluid balance can be estimated through discussion with the transplant surgeon and anaesthetist and review of anaesthetic chart (Section 3). Currently, no studies on fluid management in the perioperative phase of renal transplantation exist to guide practice. A recent randomised trial demonstrated non-inferiority of a non-restrictive perioperative intravenous fluid strategy in high-risk abdominal surgery in terms of disability-free survival. Furthermore, the restrictive fluid strategy was associated with increased rates of acute kidney injury (8.6 vs. 5.0%. p < 0.001) [45]. Although generalizability to renal transplantation is uncertain, a restrictive fluid

A common strategy for managing post-operative fluid replacement in the hours after kidney transplantation is to replace the urine output from the previous hour plus 30 mL to account for insensible losses. A loop diuretic and/or mannitol is sometimes administered during the transplant surgery to precipitate a diuresis, decreasing requirement for dialysis, but has not been shown to improve graft

Frequent clinical assessment of the recipient's fluid status, including the jugular venous pressure, heart rate, blood pressure and urine output, is important to ensure adequate fluid replacement and to avoid volume overload. Traditional parameters and clinical assessment of fluid status, however, may be unreliable due to compromised homeostatic mechanisms in ESKD and the post-ischaemic transplanted kidney [47]. As soon as it is feasible post-transplant, recipients should be weighed with comparison to their preoperative weight as an objective guide to fluid status. There is currently no evidence supporting one type of intravenous fluid therapy over another, although a pragmatic, registry-based, multi-centre, doubleblind, randomised controlled trial comparing balanced crystalloid solution (PlasmaLyte) with 0.9% saline on the incidence of delayed graft function in 800 adults and children with end-stage kidney disease (ESKD) receiving a deceased donor kidney transplant in Australia and New Zealand is currently underway

A good urine output in the early post-transplant period is a helpful indicator of early graft function, although it may not be possible to differentiate allograft urine output from native urine output in recipients who have significant residual renal function. Oligoanuria may be an indicator of delayed graft function or a harbinger of an early complication, especially if the urine output was good initially (Section 5.4). An urgent ultrasound is a useful investigation to assess perfusion of the allograft at the bedside and to check for evidence of ureteric or vascular complications. The presence of hypoechoic fluid collections may indicate haemorrhage or

Blood tests to monitor serum creatinine and electrolytes are collected immediately post-transplant and then 6–12 h to monitor renal function and exclude

**18**

Complications in the perioperative phase are diverse, reflecting pre-existing transplant recipient comorbidities as well as individual surgical challenges. With the potential for there to be few symptoms from the denervated graft, most centres follow a protocol of investigations for early identification of post-transplant complications (**Table 6**).

Generally, an early renal transplant duplex ultrasound can identify vascular or anastomotic complications including renal vessel thrombosis or compression. The resistive index (RI) (measured peak systolic velocity—end diastolic velocity/ peak systolic velocity), normally, between 0.60 and 0.80, with levels >0.8 suggesting abnormal perfusion of the allograft, is a widely reported measure of allograft perfusion for duplex scans but does not seem to correlate well with renal histology [48]. A positive correlation has been reported between RI and recipient mortality, and the strongest predictor of an elevated RI was recipient age, suggesting that RI may be an indicator of recipient vascular disease [48]. Consequently, although the RI is commonly reported, clinicians need to be aware of its limitations.

Similarly, nuclear medicine imaging, such as a mercaptoacetyltriglycine (MAG3) or diethylenetriamine pentaacetic acid (DTPA) renogram, can assist in the assessment of allograft perfusion and early graft function as well as identify a ureteric anastomotic leak. Radionucleotide scanning may give an indication of the likely duration of delayed graft function [49, 50].
