Coronary angiographic findings in renal transplant patients with chronic coronary artery disease: a pilot study

Abstract

Background: Patients that undergo renal transplantation (RT) often suffer from high rates of cardiovascular disease-related mortality, yet, most of the studies focus on coronary angiography performed as screening to entry in a waiting list and not, as for clinical indication, after renal transplantation. Methods: This study examined coronary angiography findings from 45 patients with functional renal grafts for over 6 months that were analyzed in Anzhen Hospital (Beijing, China) from 2014-2019. For comparison purposes, we additionally examined coronary angiography findings from 45 age- and sex-matched patients undergoing chronic dialysis due to end-stage renal disease (ESRD). We used the SYNTAX score to gauge coronary artery disease (CAD) severity. Results: The duration of ESRD in patients in the RT group was significantly longer than for that of patients in the dialysis comparison group (19.31 ± 7.83 years vs. 11.43 ± 8.04 years, p < 0.001). The SYNTAX scores for patients in the dialysis and RT groups were 17.76 ± 7.35 and 12.57 ± 5.61, respectively (p < 0.01). We found that 64.4% and 28.9% of dialysis and RT patients, respectively, exhibited the presence of moderate or severe calcified lesions upon examination. In addition, the SYNTAX scores of RT patients were correlated with ESRD duration (p < 0.001). Conclusions: We observed less serious CAD in RT patients relative to long-term dialysis patients even though the former group exhibited a longer mean ESRD duration. Both groups exhibited high rates of calcification of the coronary artery, even following RT.