Barriers to Kidney Transplant Evaluation in HIV‐Positive Patients with Advanced Kidney Disease: A Single‐Center Study

BACKGROUND: HIV-positive kidney transplant (KT) recipients have similar outcomes to HIV-negative recipients. However, HIV-positive patients with advanced kidney disease might face additional barriers to initiating the KT evaluation process. We sought to characterize comorbidities, viral control and management, viral resistance, and KT evaluation appointment rates in a cohort of KT evaluation-eligible HIV-positive patients. METHODS: We included patients seen between January 1, 2008, and December 31, 2015, at a primary care HIV clinic who met KT evaluation eligibility by an estimated glomerular filtration rate 200 copies. Among patients with HIV resistance profiles (50%, n = 21), 52% had resistance to at least one class of ART. A majority (60%, n = 25) were scheduled for KT evaluation appointment, but of those, only 8% (n = 2) had evidence of appointments before dialysis dependence. Those without appointments had more schizophrenia (29% vs 4%, P = .02), resistance (78% vs 33%, P = .04), ART prescription (76% vs 48%, P = .04), and more kidney disease of unknown etiology (53% vs 8%, P = .02). CONCLUSION: Kidney transplant evaluation-eligible HIV-positive patients had a high rate of evaluation appointments, but a low rate of preemptive evaluation appointments. Schizophrenia and viral resistance disproportionally affected patients without evaluation appointments. These data precede the recommendation for universal ART for all HIV+ patients, regardless of CD4 count and viral load, and must be interpreted in the context of this limitation.