title: Health-related quality of life after liver transplantation: a meta-analysis.
abstract: The goal of this study is to assess health-related quality of life (HRQL) after orthotopic liver transplantation (OLT). Structured MEDLINE and Embase literature searches identified 5473 potentially relevant articles. Thirty-two additional references were collected from the bibliographies. Of the 5505 identified articles, 49 studies reporting data on 3576 transplant recipients met our inclusion criteria, which were an assessment of quality of life (QOL) in adult patients reported as either pretransplantation and posttransplantation data or with a comparison group and written in English. We combined posttransplantation QOL scores from 15 studies that reported data from the same QOL scales to assess the magnitude of the effect of OLT on QOL scales. We also performed a sign test on the 49 studies to evaluate the direction (positive or negative) of the effect of transplantation on QOL. Transplantation resulted in an improvement of 32% in Karnofsky scores, 11% in Sickness Impact Profile scores, and 20% to 50% in the domains of the Nottingham Health Profile. The sign test showed significant improvement in posttransplantation physical health (P <.0004), sexual functioning (P <.008), daily activities (P <.02), general HRQL (P <.02), and social functioning (P <.05), but not psychological health (P <.08). In general, the HRQL of the 3576 patients was impaired pretransplantation and improved posttransplantation. Transplant recipients reported large gains in those aspects of QOL most affected by physical health and smaller improvements in areas affected by psychological functioning.
authors.affiliation: Department of Veterans Affairs Health Care System, Palo Alto, CA 94304, USA.
authors.forename: D M
authors.initials: DM
authors.lastname: Bravata
authors.forename: I
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Olkin
authors.forename: A E
authors.initials: AE
authors.lastname: Barnato
authors.forename: E B
authors.initials: EB
authors.lastname: Keeffe
authors.forename: D K
authors.initials: DK
authors.lastname: Owens
mesh_terms: D000203:Activities of Daily Living; D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D000328:Adult; D001294:Attitude to Health; D005260:Female; D006262:Health; D006304:Health Status; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D017567:Karnofsky Performance Status; D016031:Liver Transplantation / Q000502:physiology / Q000523:psychology*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011788:Quality of Life; D012725:Sexual Behavior; D018434:Sickness Impact Profile