Predicting survival after liver transplant

Potential transplant patients who also suffer from heart disease, diabets, emphysema, connective tissue disease or kidney disease may have poorer survival after liver transplantation, according to a study published recently in Liver Transplantation.

Micheal Volk and colleagues, from the University of Michigan, looked at over 600 patients who had undergone liver transplantation between 1994 and 2005. Of these patients, 40% had some other illness, such as heart disease, before transplantation. These patients were found to have poorer survival after transplantation than patients who only had liver disease.

In the future this may affect the way that doctors allocate patients for transplantation.