Predictive Factors for Massive Transfusion During Liver Transplantation

Plain-language summary

Liver transplantation (LT) is the treatment of choice for patients with end-stage liver disease (1). LT is often associated with severe intraoperative blood loss and the literature has had a great interest in clarifying the predictive factors for transfusion requirements during this surgery. Despite the advances in surgical techniques, graft preservation, and anesthetic management achieved over the past two decades, intraoperative bleeding and blood component consumption during LT are still issues of current interest. The requirement for blood components is highly variable between different transplant centers and ranges from none to many units of red blood cells (RBC), plasma, and platelets per patient. Bleeding associated with LT is multifactorial. Among the pre-transplantation factors, portal hypertension and coagulation defects are of great importance. The latter can develop or amplify during the anaepatic and/or neohepatic phase due to the absence of hepatic metabolic function, hyperfibrinolysis or platelet sequestration in the graft. In the literature, the higher transfusion requirement (HTR) is associated with worse postoperative outcomes, with an increase in both the length of stay in the intensive care unit (ICU) and in hospital, and mortality.

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