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World J Gastroenterol. Sep 21, 2016; 22(35): 8010-8016
Published online Sep 21, 2016. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v22.i35.8010
Liver grafts from hepatitis B surface antigen-positive donors: A review of the literature
Elisabetta Loggi, Fabio Conti, Alessandro Cucchetti, Giorgio Ercolani, Antonio Daniele Pinna, Pietro Andreone
Elisabetta Loggi, Fabio Conti, Alessandro Cucchetti, Giorgio Ercolani, Antonio Daniele Pinna, Pietro Andreone, Dipartimento di Scienze Mediche e Chirurgiche, Università degli Studi di Bologna, 40138 Bologna, Italy
Pietro Andreone, Centro di Ricerca per lo Studio delle Epatiti, Università degli Studi di Bologna, 40138 Bologna, Italy
Author contributions: Loggi E and Conti F performed the literature search; Loggi E drafted the paper; Conti F, Cucchetti A and Ercolani G analyzed and interpreted the data; Pinna AD revised the paper critically for important intellectual content; and Andreone P designed the work and corrected the final version.
Conflict-of-interest statement: Nothing to declare.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (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: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Pietro Andreone, MD, Professor of Internal Medicine, Dipartimento di Scienze Mediche e Chirurgiche, Università degli Studi di Bologna, Via Massarenti, 9, 40138 Bologna, Italy. pietro.andreone@unibo.it
Telephone: +39-51-2143618 Fax: +39-51-345806
Received: March 26, 2016
Peer-review started: March 26, 2016
First decision: May 12, 2016
Revised: June 6, 2016
Accepted: July 21, 2016
Article in press: July 21, 2016
Published online: September 21, 2016
Processing time: 173 Days and 0.4 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: Organ shortage is the main problem of liver transplantation, and the use of marginal grafts could increase the donor pool. Data accumulated to date show that hepatitis B surface antigen-positive grafts could be an additional organ source for liver transplantation. The requirements that have to be fulfilled are the lack of a significant hepatitis B virus-disease of the graft, and the use of a proper prophylactic regimen, which is now largely available.