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/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.