Allograft vasculopathyDelayed Onset of Cardiac Allograft Vasculopathy by Induction Therapy Using Anti-thymocyte Globulin
Section snippets
Study Population
From January 1988 to September 1991, 194 orthotopic HTxs were performed at our institution. Among them, 134 patients were ≥18 years of age and receiving their first orthotopic HTx and surviving >3 years without re-do HTx. From this sub-population, a total of 25 patients received muromonab-CD3 (OKT3; Janssen-Cilag, The Netherlands) 0.1 to 0.2 mg/kg/day, with a maximum dose of 5 mg/day for seven doses as induction treatment, and participated in this study as the OKT3 group. Accordingly, we
Results
A total of 75 HTx recipients (56 men, 19 women; mean age 59.3 ± 12.1 years) were evaluated at a mean follow-up period of 13.4 ± 4.6 years. The length of the follow-up period did not differ significantly between the three study groups (14.0 ± 5.0 years in the ATG group, 12.6 ± 5.1 years in the OKT3 group, 13.6 ± 3.6 years in the non-induction group; between-group p = 0.520).
Discussion
The results of the present study confirm that both ATG and OKT3 as induction treatment are effective in reducing the occurrence of acute rejection episodes after cardiac transplantation. Similar findings were also reported in other comparative studies.14, 16, 17 However, no definitive superiority between ATG and OKT3 with regard to reducing acute rejection could be observed in the present study. In one of the first comparisons between induction therapy with ATG and OKT3, Starnes et al found
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