Orthotopic liver transplantation for patients with alcoholic liver disease: a retrospective study

Objective To evaluate the outcome of patients with alcoholic liver disease (ALD) after orthotopic liver transplantation (OLT) and to study the prognostic factors. Methods The data of 17 patients who underwent OLT for ALD from January 2010 to March 2013 were analyzed retrospectively. The data on age, gender, history of gastrointestinal bleeding, history of splenectomy, Child-Pugh score, Maddrey's discriminant function and MELD score were evaluated using the Kaplan-Meier method for univariate analysis. The log-rank test was applied to compare the survival rates. Results The overall survival rate at 100 weeks in patients less than 55 years old was 90% (9/10), while that in patients more than 55 years old was 28.57% (2/7). There was a significant difference between the two groups (P 0.05). There was no significant difference on survival rates after liver transplantation between patients with Child-Pugh B and Child-Pugh C, patients with Maddrey's scores 0.05). Conclusions Better survival rates were observed in ALD patients who were <55 years old after liver transplantation. The Child-Pugh score, Maddrey's discriminant function and MELD score were of no prognostic significance. These findings still need to be verified by prospective large-scale studies. Key words: Alcoholic liver disease; Orthotopic liver transplantation; Prognosis