Preoperative evaluation of living renal transplant donors: Comparison of contrast enhanced magnetic resonance angiography and conventional renal angiography

Purpose: This study was designed to compare conventional renal and contrast enhanced magnetic resonance angiography (CRA & CE-MRA, respectively) for the preoperative evaluation of living renal transplant donors. Materials and methods: Between September 2002 and November 2004, forty-five consecutive live renal transplant donors underwent preoperative evaluations of the renal vessels, using both CRA and CE-MRA before the donor nephrectomy. The intraoperative findings of the number of renal vessels were compared with those of CRA and CE-MRA, respectively. Results: Both angiographic modalities were able to detect multiple renal arteries and veins, with overall agreement between CRA and CE-MRA of 97.8 and 97.8%, respectively. The overall accuracies for predicting the number of renal arteries and veins, relative to the intraoperative findings, were 91.1 and 91.1% for CRA and 88.9 and 95.6% for CE-MRA, respectively. The CE-MRA missed 5 accessory renal arteries, whereas CRA missed 4 cases. Despite the undetected cases, there was no significant intraoperative morbidity. Additionally, renal cysts seen on CE-MRA were not detected by CRA. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that noninvasive CE-MRA is a promising substitute for CRA to evaluate the renal vessels of live renal transplant donors.