Costs of Long-Term Post-Transplantation Care in Kidney Transplant Recipients.

BACKGROUND Solid organ transplantations lead to improvements in patient survival and patient quality of life, as well as health care system economic benefits. However, over time, health problems can accumulate post-transplantation. Therefore, we hypothesized that in the late post-transplantation period, the costs of patient care increase. MATERIAL AND METHODS We retrospectively calculated costs of patient care in 306 randomly selected kidney transplant recipients who had different follow-up time periods after kidney transplantation (between 1 year and 25 years). Direct costs of inpatient care as well as outpatient care, from the perspective of a transplant center, were considered. RESULTS The mean costs, as well as median costs of post-transplantation care were the highest in the first post-transplantation year. Afterwards, the mean costs and median costs decreased, without an increase in costs of care in the late post-transplantation periods. CONCLUSIONS From the perspective of a transplant center, costs of long-term post-kidney transplantation care did not increase in the late period, even as long as 25 years after transplantation. Our results confirmed that kidney transplantation is a modality of renal replacement therapy that can be associated with economic benefits even when considering long-term post-transplantation care.