Introduction:

The management of kidney transplant recipients requires glomerular filtration rate (GFR) monitoring, which is an indicator of graft primary function and patient survival.

Objective:

To evaluate the performance of different creatinine or cystatin-based formulas in the estimation of glomerular filtration rate in Mexican patients receiving kidney transplantation.

Method:

30 transplant recipients were included, in whom the glomerular filtration rate was measured by means of iothalamate, and was also calculated using seven equations based on cystatin or creatinine.

Results:

The formula with the best performance was the one proposed by the chronic kidney disease epidemiology collaboration (CKD-EPI), with a bias of −2.4 mL/min/1.73 m2: and an accuracy of 9.6; 96.7 % of patients were within 30 % of the measured GFR. The second best formula was the modification of diet in renal disease (MDRD) equation. Cystatin-based equations showed a poor performance.

Conclusions:

Our study suggests that, in Mexican patients receiving kidney transplantations, the best equations to estimate GFR are the CKD-EPI and MDRD equations.