Kidney Transplantation: Our Experience in a Private Tertiary Center in Abuja

<i>Introduction:</i> The success of kidney transplantation depend on the effectiveness in certain key factors including excellent donor compatibility, immunosuppression and good surgical techniques. Exciting prospects in kidney transplantation is envisaged especially with the launching of standards and guidelines for the establishment and coordinating organ/tissue transplantation services by the Federal Government of Nigeria in March, 2025. We have come a long way with our five year experience in kidney transplantation. The use of branded immunosuppressive agents, excellent HLA/DSA typing and compatibility as well as ‘top notch’ surgical and medical team of experts have exponentially achieved a favorable outcome. Challenges are not unusual but we are hopeful that the future is promising and will offer more advancement in ‘tips and tricks’ of successful lifelong kidney transplantation. We report our experience in kidney transplantation over a 5 year period in our center. <i>Methodology: </i>This is a retrospective cohort study involving patients who had kidney transplantation in our facility over a 5 year period from January 2020 to December 2024. A proforma was designed to obtain existing records from our data base. Data analysis was conducted using Python with its libraries including Pandas, Numpy and Matplotib. P value of less than 0.05 was considered statistically significant. <i>Results:</i> Descriptive Statistics showed that a total of 104 patients had kidney transplantation surgery over the prescribed period. 66.35% were males while 33.65% were females. The average age of recipients was 46.27 years with a range of 24 to 72 years while the average age donors was 26.12 years with a range of 18 to 50 years. The average length of hospital stay after donor nephrectomy was 4.14 days while the average length of hospital stay for recipients post-surgery was 9.50 days with a range of 7-12 days. The etiology of renal failure were mainly long-term hypertension in 38.46%, diabetic mellitus in 29.81%, combination of both comorbid condition in 28.85%, autoimmune disease in 1.92% and genetic factor in 0.96%. Prognosis six months post-surgery was good in 82.69% and only 17.31% had unfavorable outcome. No donor mortality was observed. <i>Conclusion:</i> We have come a long way with our 5 years experience in management of end stage kidney disease in tropical Africa with excellent outcome. Though challenges are inevitable, the future still hold a promising exiting prospects as we envisage progressive experience and welcome new innovations including the use of minimal access techniques to achieve improved results.