Retrospective Cohort Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2024. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Transplant. Jun 18, 2024; 14(2): 90866
Published online Jun 18, 2024. doi: 10.5500/wjt.v14.i2.90866
Impact of COVID-19 on liver transplant recipients: A nationwide cohort study evaluating hospitalization, transplant rejection, and inpatient mortality
Faisal Inayat, Pratik Patel, Hassam Ali, Arslan Afzal, Hamza Tahir, Ahtshamullah Chaudhry, Rizwan Ishtiaq, Attiq Ur Rehman, Kishan Darji, Muhammad Sohaib Afzal, Gul Nawaz, Alexa Giammarino, Sanjaya K Satapathy
Faisal Inayat, Gul Nawaz, Department of Internal Medicine, Allama Iqbal Medical College, Lahore, Punjab 54550, Pakistan
Pratik Patel, Division of Gastroenterology, Mather Hospital and Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra University, Port Jefferson, NY 11777, United States
Hassam Ali, Arslan Afzal, Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, East Carolina University Brody School of Medicine, Greenville, NC 27834, United States
Hamza Tahir, Department of Internal Medicine, Jefferson Einstein Hospital, Philadelphia, PA 19141, United States
Ahtshamullah Chaudhry, Department of Internal Medicine, St. Dominic's Hospital, Jackson, MS 39216, United States
Rizwan Ishtiaq, Department of Internal Medicine, Saint Francis Hospital and Medical Center, Hartford, CT 06105, United States
Attiq Ur Rehman, Division of Hepatology, Geisinger Wyoming Valley Medical Center, Wilkes-Barre, PA 18711, United States
Kishan Darji, Department of Internal Medicine, Campbell University and Cape Fear Valley Medical Center, Fayetteville, NC 28301, United States
Muhammad Sohaib Afzal, Department of Internal Medicine, Louisiana State University Health, Shreveport, LA 71103, United States
Alexa Giammarino, Department of Internal Medicine, North Shore University Hospital and Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra University, Manhasset, NY 11030, United States
Sanjaya K Satapathy, Division of Hepatology, North Shore University Hospital and Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra University, Manhasset, NY 11030, United States
Author contributions: Inayat F, Patel P, Ali H, Afzal A, Tahir H, and Chaudhry A concepted and designed the study, participated in the acquisition of data, interpretation of results, writing of the original draft, and critical revisions of the important intellectual content of the final manuscript; Ishtiaq R, Rehman AU, Darji K, Afzal MS, Nawaz G, and Giammarino A contributed to the analysis and interpretation of results and drafting of the manuscript; Satapathy SK reviewed, revised, and improved the manuscript by suggesting pertinent modifications; and all authors critically assessed, edited, and approved the final manuscript and are accountable for all aspects of the work.
Institutional review board statement: The data of patients was not acquired from any specific institution but rather open-access United States National Inpatient Sample (NIS) database. The NIS contains de-identified information, protecting the privacy of patients, physicians, and hospitals. Therefore, it was deemed exempt from the institutional review board (IRB).
Informed consent statement: Participants were not required to give informed consent for this retrospective cohort study since the analysis of baseline characteristics used anonymized clinical data.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All the authors report no relevant conflicts of interest for this article.
Data sharing statement: No additional data are available.
STROBE statement: The authors have read the STROBE Statement-checklist of items, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the STROBE Statement-checklist of items.
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: Faisal Inayat, MBBS, Research Scientist, Department of Internal Medicine, Allama Iqbal Medical College, Allama Shabbir Ahmad Usmani Road, Faisal Town, Lahore, Punjab 54550, Pakistan. faisalinayat@hotmail.com
Received: December 18, 2023
Revised: March 22, 2024
Accepted: April 23, 2024
Published online: June 18, 2024
Processing time: 178 Days and 17.5 Hours
Core Tip

Core Tip: Patients with solid organ transplants may be at higher risk of severe coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). However, there is a dearth of large-scale population-based data. Using a multicenter database, this retrospective cohort study evaluates the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on hospital-related outcomes for liver transplant (LT) recipients in the United States. Our findings show that the LT hospitalization rates were similar before and during the pandemic. LT recipients had increased rates of inpatient mortality and transplant rejection during the COVID-19 pandemic. It underscores the importance of tailored clinical management to improve outcomes and reduce morbidity and mortality for hospitalized LT recipients.