Survival advantage for patients accepting the offer of a circulatory death liver transplant
Publication: Journal of Hepatology
Rhiannon Taylor, Elisa Allen, James A. Richards, Mingzheng A. Goh, James Neuberger, David Collett, Gavin J. Pettigrew, Liver Advisory Group to NHS Blood and Transplant
11 January 2019
Summary:
This study looks at patients who require a liver transplant to save their lives; this liver can be donated by a person who has died either after their heart has stopped (donation after cardiac death – DCD) or after the brain has been injured and can no longer support life (donation after brainstem death – DCB). We know that livers donated after brainstem death function better than those after cardiac death, but there are not enough of these livers for everyone, so we wished to help patients decide whether it was better for them to accept an early offer of a DCD liver than waiting longer to receive a “better” liver from a DBD donor. We found that patients were more likely to survive if they accepted the offer of a liver transplant as soon as possible (DCD or DBD), especially if their liver disease was very severe.