These tools will no longer be maintained as of December 31, 2024. Archived website can be found here. PubMed4Hh GitHub repository can be found here. Contact NLM Customer Service if you have questions.


Pubmed for Handhelds

PUBMED FOR HANDHELDS

Search MEDLINE/PubMed

  • Title: Simultaneous liver and kidney transplantation.
    Author: Dube GK, Cohen DJ.
    Journal: Curr Opin Nephrol Hypertens; 2007 Nov; 16(6):547-53. PubMed ID: 18089969.
    Abstract:
    PURPOSE OF REVIEW: The Model for End-Stage Liver Disease (MELD) scoring system for prioritizing patients for liver transplantation heavily weights serum creatinine, leading to increased numbers of liver transplant patients with renal insufficiency receiving both liver-alone transplants and liver-kidney transplants. With available organs being scarce, review of recent outcomes and guidelines for their use is timely. RECENT FINDINGS: Despite lower average renal function in liver transplant recipients in the era of Model for End-Stage Liver Disease scoring, and poor renal function predicting inferior outcomes, overall outcomes are unchanged. Combined liver-kidney transplants have increased three-fold. Despite inferior short-term kidney and liver-graft survival rates, long-term success rates are equivalent to single-organ transplantation. Only patients requiring dialysis at the time of transplantation clearly benefit from combined liver-kidney transplants. Waitlisted patients with nonresolving severe acute kidney injury for 6-8 weeks or substantial irreversible renal parenchymal damage are also deemed appropriate candidates. Many combined liver-kidney recipients have lesser degrees of renal dysfunction, however. Accurate determination of renal function in patients with cirrhosis remains problematic. SUMMARY: Appropriate patients with irreversible end-stage renal and liver disease clearly deserve combined liver-kidney transplants. More data on the reliable assessment of renal function, renal pathology, and outcomes are needed, however.
    [Abstract] [Full Text] [Related] [New Search]