Medical Nutrition Therapy Before and After Renal Transplantation in Adults

Abstract

Renal transplantation is the transplanting the kidney from living or cadaver donor to patients whose renal function is impaired and at the end-stage chronic renal failure (CRF). Renal transplantation is the most successful treatment of end-stage CRF. The most serious risk in the kidney transplantation is detecting new kidney as a foreign body tissue by the recipient body and trying to destroy it by immune system namely rejection. This situation is prevented by tissue type accordance of donor and recipient and using immunosuppressive drugs. However some cardivascular complications such as hyperlipidemia, hypertension may develop in renal transplant recipient and may cause mortality and morbidity. Individualized medical nutritional therapy should be applied before and after the kidney transplantation considering the development of complications and side effects of immunosuppressive drugs used after transplantation. Thereby, the healing process can be accelerated, quality of life can be increased and risk of rejection can be reduced by reducing the risk of cardivascular complications as well as minimizing the side effects of immunosuppressive medication. In the present review, it was aimed to explain medical nutritional therapy, which is important for reducing complications after renal transplantation.