Combined liver transplants: main characteristics from the standpoint of anesthesia and support in intensive care.
Combined transplants with the liver represent a small number of associated pathologies with little chance of resolving with a single transplant. The small case number prevents us from establishing homogeneous criteria for the procedure. The insertion of the Model for End-Stage Liver Disease in the preoperative evaluation of the patients awaiting liver transplant has definitely increased the number of combined liver-kidney transplants, which have reached more significant numbers. The number of heart-liver transplants is still too low to establish the efficacy of the measure. The multiorgan transplant with the liver represents a rare event entrusted to a series of case reports, each one of which has a history unto itself. Our experience in this field includes 14 combined liver-kidney, six combined heart-liver, and two multiorgan transplants with liver among 36 intestine transplants. We have examined the main pre-, intra-, and postsurgical problems for each one of these transplants, particularly relating to the anesthetic and intensive-care aspects.
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Dipartimento di Scienze Chirurgiche, Ranimatorie e dei Trapianti, Università degli Studi di Bologna, Italy. aneria@med.unibo.it
Arpesella
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Bernardi
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Pierucci
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Siniscalchi
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Zanoni
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Pinna
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D000758:Anesthesia / Q000379:methods*; D003422:Critical Care; D016027:Heart Transplantation / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D007422:Intestines / Q000637:transplantation; D016030:Kidney Transplantation / Q000379:methods; D016031:Liver Transplantation / Q000379:methods*; D016343:Monitoring, Intraoperative; D011183:Postoperative Complications / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000628:therapy; D011184:Postoperative Period