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Background
While portal flow (PF) plays an important role in determining graft outcomes in living donor liver transplantation, its impact in deceased donor liver transplantation (DDLT) is unclear. The aim of this study was to investigate the correlations between graft PF and graft outcomes in DDLT.
Methods
We retrospectively investigated 1001 patients who underwent DDLT between January 2007 and June 2017 at our institution. The patients were divided into 3 groups according to hazard ratio for 1-year graft loss at each PF value, which was standardized with graft weight. Graft and recipient outcomes were compared between the groups.
Results
The low-PF group (PF < 65 mL/min/100 g, n = 210, P = 0.011) and the high-PF group (PF ≥ 155 mL/min/100 g, n = 159, P = 0.018) showed significantly poorer 1-year graft survival compared with the intermediate-PF group (PF ≥ 65 mL/min/100 g and < 155 mL/min/100 g, n = 632).
The patients in the low-PF group had severe reperfusion injury and were more frequently complicated with primary nonfunction (P = 0.013) and early allograft dysfunction (P < 0.001) compared with the other groups. In contrast, the patients in the high-PF group had milder reperfusion injury, but had lower intraoperative hepatic artery flow with higher incidence of hepatic artery thrombosis (P = 0.043) and biliary complication (P = 0.041) compared with the other groups.
Conclusions
These results suggest that intraoperative PF plays an important role in determining early graft outcomes after DDLT.
