Kidney Related Issues Leads the Medical Reasons to exclude Potential Living Kidney Donors from Donation in Saudi Arabia

Background Living kidney donors provide the best therapeutic option for patients with kidney failure going for kidney transplantation; however significant numbers of them are out for medical reasons. We aim to study the medical reasons behind excluding them from donation by transplant selection committee. Methods We assessed potential kidney donors presented to King Faisal Specialist Hospital, Riyadh from January 2015 to end of December 2016. Potential donors were identified from their recipient’s referral. All potential donors were older than 18 years were included. Data were collected by transplantation nephrologists and presented as means + Standard deviation for continuous variables and proportion for categorical variables. Results 852 patients were referred for transplantation during study time frame, 376 (44%) of them proceeded for transplantation. Most of patients who did not proceed for transplantation were due to lack of suitable donor. We present here the data for potential donors who were rolled out. 465 potential donors were rolled out due to medical reasons. The mean age was 34.1 + 9.1 years, 76 % were male. Mean Body Mass Index (BMI) was 27.9 + 5.5 for al excluded donors and 35.3 + 6.6 for donors rolled out because of obesity. Family history of Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD), Diabetes, Hypertension and kidney stone was as follow; 87.5%, 60%, 60% and 10%. Impaired glucose metabolism was seen in 30% of them with 7.5% had undiagnosed diabetes mellitus. The prevalence of hypertension, hematuria, Kidney stone and proteinuria was as follow; 12%, 17.5%, 5% and 2.5%. Table 1 summarizes the common reasons for donor exclusion.Conclusion Kidney abnormalities, obesity and impaired glucose metabolism constitute the most important reasons to exclude potential donors. The prevalence of these abnormalities is high and raises alarm on population health. Potential reasons for high prevalence might be attributed to high family history of these diseases on top of prevalent population risk.