The impact of postoperative complications on oncological outcomes of liver transplantation for hepatocellular carcinoma: A competing risk analysis

Objective: To investigate the influence of postoperative complications on tumor-related (TRD), disease-free survival (DFS) and overall survival (OS) in patients undergoing liver transplant (LT) for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC).

Methods: We retrospectively evaluated 425 LTs for HCC from 2010 to 2019. Postoperative complications were classified according to Comprehensive Complication Index (CCI) and the posttransplant risk of TRD assessed through Metroticket 2.0 calculator. The population was stratified into high-risk and low-risk cohorts based on the predicted TRD risk of 80%. In a second step, we re-evaluated TRD, DFS and OS of both cohorts according to a further stratification based on 47.3 points of CCI cut-off.

Results: In the low-risk cohort, we observed a significantly better DFS (84% vs. 46%, p<0.001), TRD (3% vs. 26%, p<0.001) and OS (89% vs. 62%, p<0.001) in the group with CCI < 47.3. In the high-risk cohort, patients with CCI < 47.3 had significantly better DFS (50% vs. 23%, p = 0.003) and OS (68% vs. 42%, p = 0.02) and a comparable TRD (22% vs. 31%, p = 0.142).

Conclusions: A complicated postoperative course negatively influenced long-term survival. This poorer oncological outcome associated with in-hospital postoperative complications suggests that every effort should be made to improve the early posttransplant course in HCC patients, including a careful donor-to recipient match and use of new perfusion technologies.