Copyright
©The Author(s) 2019. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Feb 28, 2019; 25(8): 980-988
Published online Feb 28, 2019. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v25.i8.980
Published online Feb 28, 2019. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v25.i8.980
Women on the liver transplantation waitlist are at increased risk of hospitalization compared to men
Jessica B Rubin, Jennifer C Lai, Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Department of Medicine, University of California-San Francisco, San Francisco, CA 94143 United States
Marie Sinclair, Department of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Austin Health, Heidelberg 3084, Victoria, Australia
Marie Sinclair, Department of Medicine, the University of Melbourne, Melbourne 3010, Victoria, Australia
Robert S Rahimi, Division of Hepatology, Annette C. and Harold C. Simmons Transplant Institute, Baylor University Medical Center, Dallas, TX 75346, United States
Elliot B Tapper, Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, United States
Author contributions: Rubin JB, Sinclair M, Rahimi RS, Tapper EB, and Lai JC participated in research design and writing of the manuscript; Rubin JB, Sinclair M, and Lai JC performed the research; Rubin JB and Lai JC analyzed the data.
Supported by NIA Grants for Early Medical and Surgical Subspecialists’ Transition to Aging Research (R03AG045072 , Lai); NIA Paul B. Beeson Career Development Award in Aging (K23AG048337 , Lai); and NIDDK National Research Service Award Hepatology Training Grant (T32DK060414 , Rubin). These funding agencies played no role in the analysis of the data or preparation of this manuscript.
Institutional review board statement: This study was reviewed and approved by the institutional review board at the University of California - San Francisco.
Informed consent statement: All study participants, or their legal guardian, provided informed written consent prior to study enrollment.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Data sharing statement: No additional data are available.
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/
Corresponding author: Jennifer C Lai, MD, MBA, Associate Professor, Department of Medicine, Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, University of California - San Francisco, 513 Parnassus Avenue, UCSF Box 0538, San Francisco, CA 94143, United States. jennifer.lai@ucsf.edu
Telephone: +1-4154766422 Fax: +1-4154760659
Received: November 8, 2018
Peer-review started: November 12, 2018
First decision: January 6, 2019
Revised: January 13, 2019
Accepted: January 18, 2019
Article in press: January 18, 2019
Published online: February 28, 2019
Peer-review started: November 12, 2018
First decision: January 6, 2019
Revised: January 13, 2019
Accepted: January 18, 2019
Article in press: January 18, 2019
Published online: February 28, 2019
Core Tip
Core tip: In this single-center study of patients on the liver transplant waitlist, women were significantly more likely to be hospitalized than men, and were hospitalized for a more days within one year. Among those who were hospitalized at least once, there was a trend toward higher rates of readmission among women compared to men. These gender differences were independent of underlying severity of illness, as measured by model for end- stage liver disease score, suggesting that perhaps traditional indicators of liver disease severity do not adequately capture all contributors to illness, such as non-hepatic comorbidities or socioeconomic factors, which may require acute inpatient care.