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Smaller liver transplant candidates wait up to 55 days longer than other recipients

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By Kate Burba
Liver transplant candidates with a small stature experienced longer waitlist times and had lower rates of transplant, with the smallest 25% of candidates most affected, according to study results in JAMA Surgery.

“As a liver transplant surgeon, I had noticed that small candidates on the waitlist seem to wait longer to get a liver transplant, even if they are at the top of the list,” Catherine E. Kling, MD, MPH, assistant professor in the division of transplant surgery and program director for the Abdominal Transplant Surgery Fellowship at the University of Washington, told Healio. 
Read more in Healio.

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Smaller Liver Transplant Candidates Wait Longer, Less Likely to Receive Organ

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— Disparity mostly affects women, but allocating more livers from smaller donors may help

By Sophie Putka
Liver transplant waitlist candidates who are smaller in size are significantly less likely than larger candidates to receive a liver transplant, contributing to a sex disparity in organ transplants, according to a retrospective study.

After candidates were categorized into six groups according to body surface area (BSA) from smallest (group 1) to largest (group 6), it was found that with each increase in group number, waitlist time decreased (234 days for group 1 vs 179 days for group 6, P<0.001), reported Catherine E. Kling, MD, MPH, of the University of Washington in Seattle, and colleagues.
Read the full story in MedPage Today.

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Post-Transplant NASH Patients Fare Worse With Older Donor Livers

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By Lucy Hicks

Liver transplant recipients with nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) who received grafts from older donors are at higher risk for post-transplant death, especially due to infection, according to a new study.

All-cause mortality was twice as high and death from an infectious cause was more than three times as high for patients with NASH who received liver grafts from octogenarian donors than for those who received a liver from someone younger than 50.
Read more in Medscape.

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BP Control Beneficial for Liver Transplant Recipients

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— Patients who kept their blood pressure under 140/90 mm Hg had better kidney function at 1 year

WASHINGTON — Controlling blood pressure (BP) in liver transplant recipients led to better renal function at 1 year, post hoc data from a randomized trial suggested.

Recipients taking medication to control their BP had an estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) that was 12.2 mL/min higher at 1 year when they were able to keep their BP below 140/90 mm Hg after liver transplant, reported Elizabeth Cabrera, MD, of Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago. Read more in MedPage Today.

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Some Donor Livers Keep Working for 100 Years: Study

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By Dennis Thompson, HealthDay Reporter

TUESDAY, Oct. 18, 2022 (HealthDay News) — Some human livers are tougher than others, lasting more than 100 cumulative years between the organ’s original host and a transplant recipient, a new study discovers.

Understanding what makes these livers so resilient could help improve the donor pool by paving the way for expanded use of livers from older donors, the researchers said.
Read the full story in U.S. News & World Report.

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Concurrent Liver Diseases See Increase Among Adult Liver Transplant Recipients

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New findings suggest concurrent liver diseases are increasing among adult liver transplant recipients in Australia and New Zealand, but do not seem to affect posttransplant survival.

The data additionally suggest these increases were predominantly driven by an increase in metabolic-associated fatty liver disease and alcohol-related liver disease. Read more in HCP Live.

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Liver transplantation ‘remains the standard of care’ for HCC patients, regardless of age

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Despite increased perioperative risks in older patients with hepatocellular carcinoma and cirrhosis, orthotropic liver transplantation provides greater survival benefit compared with ablative therapies, according to new research.

“Because waitlist demand for [orthotopic liver transplantation (OLT)] continues to increase at a rate that far exceeds the increase in solid-organ donation, it becomes imperative to determine the optimal groups of patients that would benefit from OLT,” Malay B. Shah, MD, FACS, surgical director of the liver transplant program at UK HealthCare at the University of Kentucky, and colleagues wrote in Journal of the American College of Surgeons. “It is well known that elderly patients undergoing elective or emergent surgery have poorer outcomes compared to their younger counterparts.” Read the full story in Healio.

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Founder of UCLA’s liver transplant program reflects on 40 years of saving lives

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‘It was an incredible span and an incredible career,’ says Dr. Ronald Busuttil. ‘I couldn’t be happier’

Dr. Ronald Busuttil remembers the day he performed his first liver transplant at UCLA Health as if it were yesterday. It was mid-afternoon, and he was at his accountant’s office doing his taxes when he received a phone call that a donor organ was available at St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank.

In the early days of liver transplantation, there was a short window to recover an organ and transplant it successfully into a patient. He needed to be at St. Joseph no later than 6 p.m. Busuttil set out with two of his colleagues for the 17-mile drive. But first, they had an errand to run. Read the full story from the UCLA Newsroom.

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