Zhu JX, Willicombe M, Crane JS. Long-term outcomes following arteriovenous fistula ligation in kidney transplant recipients. World J Nephrol 2026; 15(1): 115895 [DOI: 10.5527/wjn.v15.i1.115895]
Corresponding Author of This Article
Jia-Xi Zhu, Doctorate Student, Imperial College Renal and Transplant Centre, Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, Hammersmith Hospital Du Cane Road, London W12 0HS, United Kingdom. jiaxi.zhu21@imperial.ac.uk
Research Domain of This Article
Transplantation
Article-Type of This Article
Retrospective Cohort Study
Open-Access Policy of This Article
This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
World J Nephrol. Mar 25, 2026; 15(1): 115895 Published online Mar 25, 2026. doi: 10.5527/wjn.v15.i1.115895
Long-term outcomes following arteriovenous fistula ligation in kidney transplant recipients
Jia-Xi Zhu, Michelle Willicombe, Jeremy S Crane
Jia-Xi Zhu, Michelle Willicombe, Jeremy S Crane, Imperial College Renal and Transplant Centre, Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, London W12 0HS, United Kingdom
Michelle Willicombe, Department of Immunology and Inflammation, Imperial College London Centre for Inflammatory Disease, London W12 0HS, United Kingdom
Author contributions: Zhu JX participated in data collection, data analysis, data interpretation and writing of the article draft; Willicombe M participated in research design, data analysis, data interpretation, critical review and revision of the draft; Crane JS participated in critical review and revision of the draft.
Institutional review board statement: The analysis was approved by the West of Scotland Research Ethics Committee (20/WS/0181).
Informed consent statement: This study includes the reporting of anonymized, routinely collected clinical data and does not require individualized informed consent.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All authors declare that they have no conflict of interest to disclose.
STROBE statement: The authors have read the STROBE statement - Checklist of items, and the manuscript has been prepared and revised according to the STROBE statement - Checklist of items.
Data sharing statement: The data analyzed in the study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
Corresponding author: Jia-Xi Zhu, Doctorate Student, Imperial College Renal and Transplant Centre, Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, Hammersmith Hospital Du Cane Road, London W12 0HS, United Kingdom. jiaxi.zhu21@imperial.ac.uk
Received: October 29, 2025 Revised: November 24, 2025 Accepted: January 7, 2026 Published online: March 25, 2026 Processing time: 137 Days and 7.9 Hours
Core Tip
Core Tip: This study examines long-term outcomes following arteriovenous fistula (AVF) ligation in kidney transplant recipients, a topic with limited prior evidence. In this large, single-center cohort with extended follow-up, post-transplant AVF ligation was independently associated with improved death-censored allograft survival without differences in patient mortality. Furthermore, recipients who were “AVF-free” from transplantation, having previously been on dialysis via central venous catheter, demonstrated similarly superior allograft survival compared to those with pre-transplant AVFs. These findings suggest that the presence of AVFs may influence graft longevity, and post-transplant ligation may confer graft survival benefits in addition to previously reported cardiovascular advantages.
