Hyponatremia (low sodium levels in the blood) is a strong predictor of wait-list mortality, but it has also been associated with worse post-transplant outcomes. Two new studies examined whether incorporating sodium levels into the MELD model is a valid approach to predicting outcomes for patients with severe liver disease.

The results of these studies appear in the August 2007 issue of Liver Transplantation, the official journal of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD) and the International Liver Transplantation Society (ILTS). The journal is published on behalf of the societies by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and is available online via Wiley InterScience at http://www.interscience.wiley.com/journal/livertransplantion.

In the first study, researchers led by Angelo Luca of the Istituto Mediterraneo per i Trapianti e Terapie ad Alta Specializzazione in Palermo, Italy and Bernhard Angermayr of the Medical University of Vienna, Austria analyzed the records of 310 patients who underwent placement of a transjugular intrahepatic portosystemic shunt (TIPS) between 1999 and March 2005 at two European centers. They developed an integrated MELD (iMELD) model that incorporated both sodium levels and age, and tested it on 451 patients with cirrhosis who were on the waiting list for a liver transplant.

In another study, researchers led by M.F. Dawwas, of Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, in Cambridge, UK, examined sodium levels in 5,152 patients in the UK and Ireland who underwent a liver transplant between 1994 and 2005. They found that the blood level of sodium measured immediately prior to transplant was an independent predictor of mortality following transplant. “Although the detrimental impact of both severe recipient hyponatraemia and hypernatraemia on post-transplant survival was confined to the first 90 days, they also had deleterious effects on the frequency of postoperative complications, functional status and resource utilization even among those who survived this period,” the authors state.

In an accompanying editorial in the same issue, Scott W. Biggins of the University of California San Francisco in San Francisco, CA, notes that carefully applying models that predict mortality after transplant is a promising tool in further optimizing liver allocation. “The articles by Luca et al and Dawwas et al solidify the importance of [Na] as predictor of urgency for, and risk from, LTx [liver transplant] and fuel the debate over how to apply these risk assessments to rational improvements in liver graft allocation,” he states. Regarding the question raised in the Luca study of whether a transplant candidate’s age should be used for organ allocation, the author notes that as donor quality and post-transplant mortality risk models improve, a system that matches specific donor and recipient characteristics may improve the usefulness of liver transplants.

Articles:

“An Integrated MELD Model Including Serum Sodium and Age Improves the Prediction of Early Mortality in Patients with Cirrhosis,” Angelo Luca, Berhard Angermayr, Guido Bertolini, Franz Koenig, Giovanni Vizzini, Martin Ploner, Markus Peck-Radosavljevic, Bruno Gridelli, Jami Bosch, Liver Transplantation; August 2007; (DOI: 10.1002/lt.21197).

“The Impact of Serum Sodium Concentration on Mortality After Liver Transplantation: A Cohort Multicenter Study,” M.F. Dawwas, J.D. Lewsey, J.M. Neuberger, A.E. Gimson, Liver Transplantation; August 2007; (DOI: 10.1002/lt.21154).

“Beyond the Numbers: Rational and Ethical Application of Outcome Models for Organ Allocation in Liver Transplantation,” Scott W. Biggins, Liver Transplantation; August 2007; (DOI: 10.1002/lt. 21210).