Clear mortality gap caused by graft macrosteatosis in Chinese patients after cadaveric liver transplantation

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Liver transplantation (LT) is one of the most effective surgical treatment for patients with end-stage liver disease. Steatosis is a contributor for inferior graft quality. But its impact and safety on transplantation was less assessed in Chinese patients. METHODS: Graft steatosis and related information involved in recipients, donors and surgical procedures were retrospectively collected from 239 patients. RESULTS: Donor macrosteatosis (MaS) caused about 2.14 and 2.80 folds of increment on patient and graft mortality. Dose-response analysis revealed prominent risk of grafts on overall patient/organ mortality when MaS content exceeded 10% (P<0.05). Noteworthy, deaths were only observed in MaS group when concurrent with extremely higher post-transplant alanine aminotransferase (ALT, 64%). However, microsteatosis (MiS) grafts didn't affect outcomes after LT. In a cohort of Chinese patients, MaS had comprehensive effects on post-transplant outcomes with relatively lower safety threshold at 10%. Mortality gap caused by MaS grafts was observed in patients with severer ischemia reperfusion injury. CONCLUSIONS: Our study revealled the graft MaS affected the post-transplant outcomes in lower risk cutoff in Chinese patients. Further study is worthy to validate these results and investigate inner mechanism under the phenomenon.