Results good with combined liver-kidney transplant

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Survival rates and organ function are excellent in patients who undergo a combined liver and kidney transplant, according to a new report.

Dr. Richard Ruiz and colleagues from University of California, Los Angeles, reviewed their 16-year experience with 98 patients who received the double transplants.

Thirty-one patients died during an average follow-up of 36 months, the team reports in the Archives of Surgery. Overall survival rates were 76 percent at 1 year, 72 percent at 3 years, and 70 percent at 5 years.

As for the organs themselves, liver graft survival rates were 70 percent, 65 percent, and 65 percent, respectively, for the same intervals, the results indicate, and kidney graft survival rates were 76 percent, 72 percent, and 70 percent, respectively.

"Combined liver and kidney transplantation offers the best option for patients with simultaneous chronic liver and kidney failure when it is performed at a high-volume academic transplant center," the authors conclude.

Patients who underwent the double transplant recently have improved overall survival and graft survival, they add, "most likely" thanks to better care around the time of the procedure, the shorter time between obtaining donor organs and transplantation, and more effective anti-rejection therapy.

SOURCE: Archives of Surgery, August 2006.