Retrospective Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2019. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Hepatol. Apr 27, 2019; 11(4): 370-378
Published online Apr 27, 2019. doi: 10.4254/wjh.v11.i4.370
Being accompanied to liver discharge clinic: An easy measure to identify potential liver transplant candidates among those previously considered ineligible
Jordan Sack, Nilofar Najafian, Angela DeLisle, Simona Jakab
Jordan Sack, Nilofar Najafian, Department of Internal Medicine, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT 06510, United States
Angela DeLisle, Northeast Medical Group, Yale New Haven Health, New Haven, CT 06510, United States
Simona Jakab, Section of Digestive Diseases, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT 06510, United States
Author contributions: All authors helped to perform the research; Sack J contributed to manuscript writing, study design and data analysis; Najafian N contributed to manuscript editing and data collection; DeLisle A contributed to study design and data collection; Jakab S contributed to manuscript editing, study design and data analysis.
Institutional review board statement: This study was reviewed and approved by Yale University Institutional Review Board.
Informed consent statement: Informed consent was not required for this study per the Yale University Institutional Review Board. Data was collected anonymously.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All authors declare no conflicts of interest.
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: Simona Jakab, MD, Associate Professor, Section of Digestive Diseases, Yale University School of Medicine, 333 Cedar Street, LMP 1080, New Haven, CT 06510, United States. simona.jakab@yale.edu
Telephone: +1-203-7854138 Fax: +1-203-7857273
Received: February 12, 2019
Peer-review started: February 13, 2019
First decision: March 14, 2019
Revised: March 21, 2019
Accepted: April 8, 2019
Article in press: April 8, 2019
Published online: April 27, 2019
Processing time: 73 Days and 11.1 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: Being declined as a liver transplant candidate is not always an irreversible decision, but there is limited information about predictors for eventually achieving liver transplant eligibility. This study shows that among patients who were found not to be transplant candidates, those who presented to their post hospital discharge liver clinic appointment with family and friends had a higher chance of liver transplant eligibility within one year. This finding suggests the importance of engaging family and friends in the complex care of patients with cirrhosis.