Having children after a transplant: What information is available?
For the past several years, Sandoz has sponsored a National Transplantation Pregnancy Registry through the Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia. The person in charge of the registry is Dr. Vincent T. Armenti, MD, PhD, and he has published several papers on the subject. Reports by Armenti and his co-workers (1992) indicated that, although the incidence of prematurity (58%) and low birth weight infants (38%) among female transplant recipients is significantly higher than that in the general population, the anticipated survival rate of these infants is greater than 90 %. They further report that among wives of male kidney recipients, the incidence of prematurity and low birth weight is 9% and 4% respectively. The investigators also note that in children fathered by male kidney recipients, the pattern of pregnancy outcomes resembles that of the general population. The registry currently contains data on over 500 pregnancies; the majority of the pregnancies were in patients
