Current status of pediatric donor en bloc kidney transplantation to young adult recipients.

CONTEXT AND OBJECTIVES In recent years, despite the increased number of kidney transplants performed in Spain, we observed a gradual increase in waiting lists. The need to increase the number of transplants performed in our centers, forces us to accept as donors patients previously rejected. ACQUIRING OF EVIDENCE We performed a systematic review using PubMed of published articles in the last 10 years, that include the words transplant renal en bloque, "en bloc kidney transplantation" or its initials EBKT. SYNTHESIS OF EVIDENCE The pediatric donor to adult recipient has been included in the expanded criteria donors group, being rejected nevertheless such donors in most centers. However, in recent published series comparing the en bloc kidney transplantation from pediatric donor to adult recipients with other transplanted groups, the authors observe similar results between this kind of transplantation and the "optimal" donor group or living kidney donor group, regarding renal function and graft survival, and better results than the transplanted kidneys with expanded criteria donors group. CONCLUSIONS The results published in the current series lead us to consider this kind of transplant as an option to increase the number of transplants performed.