The renal transplant score: A different way of evaluating renal transplant pathology

The renal transplant is a notoriously difficult organ to assess for pathology. Radionuclide imaging can help, but, although sensitive, the evaluation is not very specific. For this reason, a different approach was used to examine renal images and results were correlated with histology. The transplant score is determined from images of perfusion and function on certain criteria such as time of appearance of the kidney after tracer injection, intensity of background, size and homogeneity of tracer uptake by the kidney. Although small, the pilot study could distinguish between hyperacute rejection, acute rejection, chronic rejection and cyclosporin toxicity.