Abramowicz, Daniel, Cochat, Pierre, Claas, Frans H. J., Heemann, Uwe, Pascual, Julio, Dudley, C., Harden, Paul, Hourmant, Marivonne, Maggiore, Umberto, Salvadori, Maurizio, Spasovski, Goce, Squifflet, Jean-Paul, Steiger, Jurg, Torres, Armando, Viklicky, Ondrej, Zeier, Martin, Vanholder, Raymond, Van Biesen, Wim, and Nagler, Evi
The European Best Practice Guideline group (EBPG) issued guidelines on the evaluation and selection of kidney donor and kidney transplant candidates, as well as post-transplant recipient care, in the year 2000 and 2002. The new European Renal Best Practice board decided in 2009 that these guidelines needed updating. In order to avoid duplication of efforts with kidney disease improving global outcomes, which published in 2009 clinical practice guidelines on the post-transplant care of kidney transplant recipients, we did not address these issues in the present guidelines. The guideline was developed following a rigorous methodological approach: (i) identification of clinical questions, (ii) 0 (0%) recommendations graded '1A', 15 (13%) were '1B', 19 (17%) '1C' and 17 (15%) '1D'. None (0%) were graded '2A', 1 (0.9%) was '2B', 8 (7%) were '2C' and 9 (8%) '2D'. Limitations of the evidence, especially the lack of definitive clinical outcome trials, are discussed and suggestions are provided for future research. We present here the complete recommendations about the evaluation of the kidney transplant candidate as well as the potential deceased and living donor, the immunological work-up of kidney donors and recipients and the perioperative recipient care. We hope that this document will help caregivers to improve the quality of care they deliver to patients. The full version with methods, rationale and references is published in Nephrol Dial Transplant (2013) 28: i1-i71; doi: 10.1093/ndt/ gft218 and can be downloaded freely from http://www. oxfordjournals.org/our_journals/ndt/era_edta.html. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]