Posttransplant outcomes
At the patient-level there were more 30-day mortalities (4.1% non-induction vs 3.1% induction, p<0.001) and fewer patients requiring dialysis after OHT (9.4% non-induction vs 11.6% induction, p<0.001) in the non-induction therapy group. Nevertheless, this difference was not sustained when we compared the center-level outcomes among induction therapy utilization terciles (Figure 2).
Approximately 16.2% (n=2,845) of patients had an episode of rejection requiring pharmacological intervention within the first year after OHT. No differences were observed among the groups with 16.2% (n=955), 16.3% (n=951) and 16.1% (n=939) patients developing drug-treated rejection within 1-year in the low, intermediate and high induction terciles, respectively (p=0.47). Overall 25 centers had rates of rejection above 20% and these were evenly distributed among the groups (Figure 3). When patients were stratified by their pre-OHT rejection risk score, no center-level correlation was observed between the drug-treated rejection rate and induction therapy utilization (R=0.03 for low, R=0.03 for moderate and r=0.04 for high risk; p<0.001) (Figure 4).