Retrospective Cohort Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2023. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Nov 7, 2023; 29(41): 5630-5640
Published online Nov 7, 2023. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v29.i41.5630
Application of extended criteria donor grafts in liver transplantation for acute-on-chronic liver failure: A retrospective cohort study
Jin-Long Gong, Jia Yu, Tie-Long Wang, Xiao-Shun He, Yun-Hua Tang, Xiao-Feng Zhu
Jin-Long Gong, Department of Hepatobiliary Surgery, Hunan Provincial People's Hospital, The First Affiliated Hospital of Hunan Normal University, Changsha 410005, Hunan Province, China
Jin-Long Gong, Jia Yu, Tie-Long Wang, Xiao-Shun He, Yun-Hua Tang, Xiao-Feng Zhu, Organ Transplant Center, The First Affiliated Hospital, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou 510080, Guangdong Province, China
Jia Yu, Department of Gastroenterology Surgery, The First Affiliated Hospital of University of South China, Hengyang 421005, Hunan Province, China
Author contributions: Gong JL, Tang YH, and Zhu XF conceived study; Gong JL, Yu J and Wang TL collected data and analyzed data; Yu J and Wang TL prepared figures and tables; Gong JL and Yu J wrote manuscript; He XS, Tang YH, and Zhu XF reviewed manuscript; All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
Institutional review board statement: The study was reviewed and approved for publication by our Institutional Reviewer.
Informed consent statement: All study participants or their legal guardian provided informed written consent about personal and medical data collection prior to study enrolment.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All the Authors have no conflict of interest related to the manuscript.
Data sharing statement: The datasets of the current study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Xiao-Feng Zhu, MD, PhD, Professor, Surgeon, Organ Transplant Center, The First Affiliated Hospital, Sun Yat-Sen University, No. 58 Zhongshan Road, Guangzhou 510080, Guangdong Province, China. zhuxiaof@mail.sysu.edu.cn
Received: August 23, 2023
Peer-review started: August 23, 2023
First decision: September 11, 2023
Revised: September 24, 2023
Accepted: October 23, 2023
Article in press: October 23, 2023
Published online: November 7, 2023
ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS
Research background

There is no consensus on the usage of extended criteria donor (ECD) grafts in liver transplantation (LT) for acute-on-chronic liver failure (ACLF) patients.

Research motivation

It was intended to summarize the experience of using ECD livers in ACLF-LT.

Research objectives

Our study aimed to summarize the experience of using ECD livers in ACLF-LT, and to provide reference for clinical practice.

Research methods

We conducted a retrospective cohort study to analyze outcomes between ECD and non-ECD recipients.

Research results

There was no significant difference (P > 0.05) in survival between ECD and non-ECD recipients after LT, although ECD grafts were associated with a significantly higher incidence of early allograft dysfunction. The most important factors affecting post-LT survival of ACLF patients were extrahepatic organ failures (OFs) > 2 (P = 0.015) and intraoperative blood loss (P = 0.000).

Research conclusions

ECD grafts can be safely used in ACLF-LT, although related to a higher risk of early allograft dysfunction.

Research perspectives

Due to the unavoidable selection bias in clinical practice, there were only 2 cases of donor liver have diagnosed as macrovesicular steatosis more than 30%. This indicates that the ECD grafts actually adopted in our clinical practice may be relatively safe, and those grafts empirically judged as "high risk" were abandoned. Admittedly, this is a major limitation of our current study, and the next step will be to try to compensate it by including more cases in our study over a longer period or in conjunction with other transplant centers.