MARRIAGES, PREGNANCIES AND PARENTHOODS DURING POSTTRANSPLANTATION PERIOD

Psychiatric and social rehabilitation is also very important as well as the medical rehabilitation after a successful transplantation. Encouragement of both marriage of single or widowed patients and becoming a parent of willing patients are important issues of this rehabilitation. In this study, the renal transplant recipients being followed-up at our transplantation outpatient's clinic were investigated retrospectively with regard to their marriages, pregnancies and parenthoods. Five hundred sixty eight patients (400 M, 168 F) being followed-up our outpatient's clinic between October 1984 and December 1997 were included in the study. Five female, 14 male patients got married, respectively, a mean of 63±52 and 33±21 months after the transplantation. Only two female patients gave birth to healthy male children after 12 and 13.5 months of marriage. Eight out of 14 male patients became a father after a mean of 56±_13 months. All of the children are healthy. We found that males got married significantly earlier (p<0.001) than females during the posttransplant period. Seven male patients who were married before the transplantation got pregnant 16 times during a mean of 26.6+19.8 months period posttransplantation. Fourteen pregnancies ended with therapeutic curetage whereas the remaining two ended with healthy female children. One baby was delivered under emergency conditions due to premature rupture of membranes and the other was delivered by elective ceaserian section. In all cases infectious endocarditis prophylaxis was given according to the American Heart Association recommendations. There wasn 't a significant difference in arterial blood pressure, serum creatinine levels and proteinuria before, during and after the pregnancies. In conclusion, it is advised for renal transplant recipients with stable clinical and biochemical markers, to get married; to get pregnant and to become a parent for their psychosocial rehabilitation. Renal functions of pregnant renal transplant recipients do not detoriate during their pregnancies.