Loss of Pediatric Kidney Grafts During the “High–Risk Age Window”: Insights From Pediatric Liver and Simultaneous Liver–Kidney Recipients

Pediatric kidney transplant recipients experience a high–risk age window of increased graft loss during late adolescence and early adulthood that has been attributed primarily to sociobehavioral mechanisms such as nonadherence. An examination of how this age window affects recipients of other organs may inform the extent to which sociobehavioral mechanisms are to blame or whether kidney‐specific biologic mechanisms may also exist. Graft loss risk across current recipient age was compared between pediatric kidney (n = 17,446), liver (n = 12,161) and simultaneous liver–kidney (n = 224) transplants using piecewise‐constant hazard rate models. Kidney graft loss during late adolescence and early adulthood (ages 17–24 years) was significantly greater than during ages