Surgical Decision Making in a Successful Liver Allograft Survival: Problem State

By far, the most effective choice of treatment in treating acute, chronic liver diseases and certain liver cancers is liver transplantation. Survival after liver transplantation has significantly improved in the last decades, but factors associated with a long-term survival have not been well defined yet. In current clinical practice, the Model for End-stage Liver Disease (MELD) score is commonly used. The score allows to prioritize patients waiting for liver surgery. It has been a long debate to link high MELD scores and post-surgical transplant outcomes. However, most of the studies failed to prove the accuracy between pretransplantation MELD scores and outcomes following transplantation. Therefore, an easy-to-use model that can predict post-surgical survival (short and long) outcomes after liver transplantation is essential.