Indiana University kidney transplant program: overview and summary of the last 1022 kidney alone transplants with at least 1 year follow-up.

Indiana University's kidney transplant program has undergone changes in the program's approach to immunosuppression. This change in philosophy has moved the program away from multiple chronic maintenance immunosuppression strategies with corticosteroids to steroid-free maintenance immunosuppressive strategies for both adults and pediatric recipients. Anti-thymocyte globulin induction (beginning pre-reperfusion) has allowed for the rapid post-transplant withdrawal of corticosteroids. Steroid-free maintenance immunosuppression has been achieved with excellent patient and graft survival as well as lower rejection rates in the first posttransplant year. Desensitized recipients can also be safely included in steroid-free protocols. The administration of anti-thymocyte globulin prereperfusion combined with pulsatile perfusion storage of deceased donor kidneys has led to an extremely low delayed graft function rate.