There is a dispute about the justification of renal re-transplantation in the presence of organ shortage, and the concept that patients who have lost a transplanted kidney are widely recognized as a high risk for re-transplantation. This is a retrospective study of the outcome of renal re-transplantation (Re-Tx) and to find out if renal retransplantation is justified. Between 1993 and December 2006, 646 kidney transplantation procedures were performed in our centre, 39 of these (6%) were Re-Tx. The medical records of these patients were reviewed. They were 19 males and 20 females, aged 10 to 62 years (mean 36 years), and nine of them were children. Kidney grafts were obtained from 16 living and 23 cadaveric donors. Induction immunosuppression was with ATG in 28, and with anti-Interleukin-2 receptor antibodies in 5 recipients. Patients were followed up for 12 months to 134 months. Post transplantation complications were in the form of: 14 instances of surgical complication, 12 episodes of acute rejection, and 2 cases of malignancy. Four recipients died with functioning graft at 4 months to 62 months after Tx. Seven more grafts were lost at one day to 84 months after Tx secondary to renal vessel thrombosis in 3, chronic dysfunction in 3, and graft infarction secondary to antiphospholipid syndrome in one recipient.

		FirstTx		Re-Tx
Number of recipients		607 (94%)		39 (6%)
Burgical complications		158 (26%)		14 (36%)
10- year recipient survival		93%		90%
10- year graft survival		86%		72%

It was observed in the present series that renal Re-Tx is associated with recipient survival rates which are similar, and graft survival rates which are 10-13 % lower than those in primary Tx. These results are still quite reasonable to justify renal re-transplantation.