Fever, infection, and rejection after kidney transplant failure.

Background: Patients returning to dialysis therapy after renal transplant failure have high morbidity and retransplant rates. After observing frequent hospitalizations with fever after failure, it was hypothesized that maintaining immunosuppression for the failed allograft increases the risk of infection, while weaning immunosuppression can lead to symptomatic rejection mimicking infection.

Methods: One hundred eighty-six patients with failed kidney transplants were analyzed for rates of hospitalization with fever within 6 months of allograft failure.