The cost of kidney transplantaion at Merkur Univerity Hospital

Objective Determining the cost of hospitalization for a transplant procedure and identifying the independent variables associated with the cost of transplantation. Design Retrospective single-center cohort study. Setting Tertiary university hospital transplant center in Zagreb, Croatia. Participants 219 consecutive kidney recipients, transplanted in the 2007– 2013 period, in the Merkur University Hospital. Results This study included 219 patients (141 males and 78 females) who received the KT between 2007 and 2013 in our center. The majority of kidney transplants were from a deceased donor (179), while 40 were from a living donor. The average cost of a transplantation was HRK 86140± 42240, with 29000 being the minimum and 408000 being the maximum. In the bivariate analysis, the variables associated with the cost of transplantation were the duration of hospitalization, DGF, death of the patient, graft loss, use of steroids, and death-censored graft loss. In the multivariate analysis, DGF was the only statistically significant variable for the cost of transplantation. Conclusions Since only DGF had an impact on the cost of transplantation in this study, certain steps, such as shortening of the cold ischemia time (better organization of organ transport), better education of family members for living donors, and higher percentage of patients on PD, should be taken to lower the percentage of DGF.