Postpartum renal failure in a renal transplant patient

The documented and highly prevalent reproductive dysfunction in renal failure patients tends to reverse after renal transplantation and the number of pregnancies following renal transplantation now has climbed well into the hundreds. The outcome for both the mothers and infants is quite favorable; however, both irreversible reduction of allograft function and graft loss presumably secondary to rejection have been reported in a small percentage of patients. Postpartum renal failure has been described and accepted as a syndrome since the late 1960s. This infrequent entity is poorly understood and associated with a grave prognosis for recovery of renal function. We describe in this report the case of a young woman with stable transplant function throughout pregnancy who developed postpartum renal failure with subsequent loss of her allograft.