IMAGE: Liver stock photo view more
Credit: Getty Images
Liver transplant priority in the U.S. goes to the sickest patients, which fails to consider other important factors, including how long patients are likely to survive post-transplant.
Researchers with Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine are collaborating with faculty at the University of Pennsylvania to develop a risk score that more comprehensively prioritizes liver cancer patients for transplantation.
Their paper documenting the development and validation of the LiTES-HCC score to predict post-transplant survival for hepatocellular carcinoma, or liver cancer, patients was published in the highly respected peer-reviewed Journal of Hepatology.
The authors looked retrospectively at national registry data of more than 6,500 adult deceased donor liver transplant recipients and found the 11 variables selected for their scoring system resulted in patient prioritization based on predicted survival and survival benefit, according to the study’s lead author, David Goldberg, M.D., MSCE, associate professor of medicine in the Division of Digestive Health and Liver Diseases at the Miller School.
Dr. Goldberg is principal investigator for an ongoing National Institutes of Health grant aimed at redefining liver transplantation prioritization in the U.S.
“There are basically two large
Article originally posted at 
www.eurekalert.org
