BACKGROUND: To evaluate the effect of 1 year systemic arterial hypertension on 3-year allograft survival in children with kidney transplantation. METHODS: A retrospective study was carried out of pediatric patients submitted to kidney transplantation at the Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP) between January, 1998 and January, 2003. Patients were classified as normotensive or hypertensive according to presence of hypertension within the first year after transplantation. Survival analyses were performed with the Kaplan-Meier survival method, and survival curves were compared with the log-rank test. A p value of < 0.05 was considered statistically significant. RESULTS: Prior to transplantation there were 86 patients (64%) and after 1 year, 70 children (52%) were classified as hypertensive, respectively. Overall, the 3-year graft survival was of 92.5%. Survival of the normotensive group was 95.3% and 90.0% for the hypertensive group; the difference was not statistically significant. CONCLUSION: Although the difference between the two groups was not statistically significant the higher survival of the normotensive group seems to be clinically significant and allows hypothesizing that arterial hypertension could be a risk factor for pediatric graft survival. However, due to limitations of the study it is impossible to affirm that hypertension is an independent risk factor for lower graft survival.
Pediatric kidney transplantation; Hypertension; Graft survival
