Patients awaiting organ transplants with high alloantibody levels wait longer for a transplant than their unsensitized counterparts, often longer than their life expectancy. The majority of highly sensitized patients on the wait list die on dialysis. Cardiac failure patients awaiting heart transplantation have high short-term mortality as do many renal dialysis patients for whom dialysis is a poor substitute for renal transplantation. Better options are urgently needed to rescue such patients from likely demise and to improve their post-transplant outcomes (1) 1. Montgomery, R.A. ∙ Lonze, B.E. ∙ King, K.E. ... Desensitization in HLA-incompatible kidney recipients and survival N Engl J Med. 2011 Jul 28; 365 (4):318-326 PMID: 21793744 Google Scholar . Elimination of a few HLA antibodies can vastly expand donor organ access for such patients and help prolong survival of a successful transplant.
Knechtle et al. (Sun,) studied this question.