BACKGROUND:The loss of renal function and urination with dialysis can produce a strong emotional crisis in a patient. This study explored the correlation between psychic symptoms and quality of life among hemodialysis patients who were older than 55 years of age in relation to demographic characteristics of age, time on dialysis, and education.PATIENTS AND METHODS:Twenty patients undergoing hemodialysis were included in the study. The psychic symptoms were studied using the Symptom Checklist-90. Revised (SCL-90 R) and the quality of life was studied using the Complete Form Health Survey (SF 36).RESULTS:The high correlation between psychological sizes investigated through the SCL-90 R test and those for the SF-36 test confirmed the close relationship between physical disorders and mental suffering, and reduced vitality, and lack of socialization.CONCLUSION:The psychiatrist and psychologist may help hemodialysis patients to improve their quality of life by providing new coping strategies for each of the family, occupational, and social network.

Background. The number of obese kidney transplant candidates has been growing. However, there are conflicting results regarding to the effect of obesity on kidney transplantation outcome. The aim of this study was to investigate the association between the body mass index (BMI) and graft survival by using continuous versus categoric BMI values as an independent risk factor in renal transplantation.Methods. We retrospectively reviewed 376 kidney transplant recipients to evaluate graft and patient survivals between normal-weight, overweight, and obese patients at the time of transplantation, considering BMI as a categoric variable.Results. Obese patients were more likely to be male and older than normal-weight recipients (P = .021; P = .002; respectively). Graft loss was significantly higher among obese compared with nonobese recipients. Obese patients displayed significantly lower survival compared with nonobese subjects at 1 year (76.9% vs 35.3%; P = .024) and 3 years (46.2% vs 11.8%; P = .035).Conclusions. Obesity may represent an independent risk factor for graft loss and patient death. Careful patient selection with pretransplantation weight reduction is mandatory to reduce the rate of early posttransplantation complications and to improve long-term outcomes.

Background. There are still many controversies about the impact of delayed graft function (DGF) on kidney transplantation outcome. The aims of this study were to define factors associated with DGF and to ascertain the relative impact of DGF on kidney transplantation outcome, both in the early postoperative period and in long-term follow-up.Patients and Methods. Four hundred kidney transplant recipients were reviewed to assess the clinical impact of DGF on long-term outcome.Results. The overall prevalence of DGF was 24.3%. DGF was significantly associated with increasing recipient and donor age, duration of dialysis, and cold ischemia time. Patients with DGF displayed a significantly worse graft (P = .005) and patient (P < .001) survival compared with recipients with immediate function.Conclusion. DGF is a frequent complication of renal transplantation and may be associated with a reduced graft and even patient survival. Strategies to prevent graft injury and, more specifically, DGF may be an important clue to provide a better long-term outcome in kidney transplantation.

BACKGROUND:Nonimmunologic factors have been recently implicated in worse outcomes after kidney transplantation, producing a need to predict the operative risk among kidney recipients. We assessed the predictive value of the Charlson comorbidity index (CCI) among kidney transplant recipients.METHODS:A retrospective study of 223 first deceased-donor kidney transplantations performed from 2000 to 2007 evaluated the role of comorbidities.RESULTS:About 50% of recipients displayed >1 comorbid condition before transplantation; the most frequently reported was diabetes mellitus. Increasing CCI scores significantly affected graft and patient survivals. Crude analysis showed a significant association between CCI >1 and risk of death (hazard ratio [HR], 3.87; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.06-14.06; P = .04). After adjustment for several covariates, high CCI values remained significantly predictive of posttransplantation outcomes with a HR for death of (12.53; 95% CI, 1.9-82.68; P = .009).CONCLUSIONS:Our predictive model showed a strong association of CCI and patient survival even after adjustment for several clinical covariates. CCI may be used to evaluate patients referred for kidney transplantation who display a significant burden of comorbid conditions that increase the risk of premature death or graft loss.