Cardiovascular complications and sepsis are two major concerns after liver transplant for nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, more so than after liver transplant for other indications.
The finding comes from what the authors called the first systematic review and meta-analysis to investigate the cumulative clinical experience of liver transplant for NASH, wrote Dr. Xiaofei Wang and colleagues in the March issue of Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology (doi: 10.1016/j.cgh.2013.09.023).
In their analysis, Dr. Wang, of the Affiliated Hospital of North Sichuan Medical College, Nanchong, China, and colleagues performed a search of PubMed, Embase, the Cochrane Library, and the Web of Science for studies published through Sept. 1, 2012, that looked at liver transplant for nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) or NASH. Reviews were excluded, as were studies in which NASH patients could not be separated out from non-NASH liver transplant recipients.
Courtesy Wikimedia Commons/ Nephron/ Creative Commons License
A high-magnification micrograph of steatohepatitis, taken from a liver biopsy with a trichrome stain.
Overall, nine studies were analyzed, all of which measured outcomes after liver transplant for NASH. Other indications for transplant included primary biliary cirrhosis/primary sclerosing cholangitis, alcoholic liver disease, hepatitis C, hepatitis B, and cryptogenic cirrhosis.
The researchers found that, on the whole, survival rates at post-transplant years 1, 3, and 5 did not significantly differ between NASH patients and their non-NASH counterparts (1-year odds ratio, 0.77; 95% confidence interval, 0.59-1.00; P = .05; 3-year OR, 0.97; 95% CI, 0.67-1.40; P = .86; 5-year OR, 1.09; 95% CI, 0.77-1.56; P = .63).
Nevertheless, NASH patients registered more deaths due to "cardiovascular events" compared with non-NASH liver transplant recipients, the authors wrote (OR, 1.65; 95% CI, 1.01-2.70; P = .05).
The authors also found that NASH patients were significantly more likely to die of sepsis post transplant than were non-NASH patients (OR, 1.71; 95% CI, 1.17-2.50; P = .006).
On the other hand, NASH patients had fewer deaths caused by graft failure than did patients undergoing liver transplant for other indications (OR, 0.21; 95% CI, 0.05-0.89; P = .03).
In an attempt to explain their findings, the authors pointed out that while cardiovascular events are the top cause of non–graft-related mortality in all liver transplants, NASH patients might be especially susceptible, given that their diagnosis is "frequently associated" with cardiovascular risk factors such as obesity, diabetes, and hypertension. Indeed, these same characteristics might also predispose these patients to postoperative infection and sepsis, they added.
And regarding the finding that graft-related mortality is actually lower among NASH patients, Dr. Wang and colleagues postulated that this may be due to the "lower likelihood of disease recurrence, and this may mean lower rates of graft failure compared with other liver diseases, such as hepatitis C virus and hepatitis B virus infection."
The authors conceded that there were several limitations to their analysis, not the least being heterogeneity between included studies. Moreover, two large population-based studies using national databases were ultimately excluded due to patient duplication and poor accuracy with regard to the cause of death.
In any case, the current analysis shows that "more attention and careful consideration are required in selecting patients with NASH for liver transplant, along with aggressive management of cardiovascular complications and sepsis after transplantation."
The authors disclosed no conflicts of interest related to this study. They wrote that funding was provided by the scientific research development project of North Sichuan Medical College.