 In a case control study from the Transplantation Center of Mannheim, Germany, donor use of both dopamine and noradrenaline during intensive care before organ retrieval was associated with less acute rejection episodes after transplantation and resulted in superior long-term graft survival. Donor employment of catecholamines remained predictive of an improved graft survival probability even after controlling for various confounding factors like age, gender, cold ischemia, HLA matching and immunosuppressive medication. This observation has been confirmed by a larger retrospective cohort study based on the Eurotransplant registry, including 2404 kidney transplants performed at 47 renal transplantation centers in 1993. The salutary effect on the graft function rate at 4 years exhibited a dose-response relationship and compared in quantitative terms with prospective HLA matching on class I or II antigens. Besides these long-term benefits, donor preconditioning with dopamine is associated with improvements of immediate graft function after kidney transplantation. Donor dopamine was associated with less requirement of hemodialysis and more rapid recovery of graft function posttransplant in a single centre study involving 254 consecutive renal transplant recipients. 