Objectives: The aim of this work was to evaluate outcome in a continuous homogeneous series of more than 1000 liver transplantations in order to determine risk groups.
Methods: Between November 1984 and February 1995, 1052 isolated orthotopic liver transplantations were performed in 922 patients (530 males, 392 females; mean age 41.7 years; age range 10 months - 78 years) at the Paul-Brousse Hospital liver transplantation unit. Immunosuppression was based on cyclosporin in all patients with FK506 in the most recent cases.
Results: Actuarial survival at 1,5 and 8 years for the 922 patients was 80.9, 71.7, and 69.1%. Certain factors affecting the intrinsic risk of transplantation were identified and could be used to calculate supplementary risk due to one or more other risk factors. In adults under 55 years in UNOS stage 1 or 2 (not hospitalized at call in) transplanted after 1990 for non-recurrent (absence of cancer, non-viral disease) chronic liver disease, the risk of death at 1 year was 6.5% and 4.4% between the first and second year. For patients transplanted for acute liver failure and for patients transplanted for chronic liver disease in UNOS stade 3 or 4 (hospitalized or in an intensive care unit at call in), there was a supplementary risk of death at 1 year of 20.3%, 13.3% and 31.6% respectively. There was no supplementary risk of death in these three groups after 1 year. In patients over 55 years, there was a 4.4% supplementary risk during the first year after transplantation and a 2% increase between the first and second year. In patients transplanted for cancer, the supplementary risk was 9.7% during the first year, 11.6% between the first and second year and 2.1% between the third and fifth year.
Conclusions: On the basis of these results, it was possible to develop a method for assessing liver transplantation outcome in different units. The proposed criteria is the 1 year survival of patients with the basic risk alone, without any supplementary risk, as well as the retransplantation index (mean number of grafts used per patient). For the Paul-Brousse unit, this criteria is 93.5% (survival at 1 year) for a retransplantation index of 1.1.