title: Strategies to optimize the use of marginal donors in liver transplantation.
abstract: Liver transplantation is the treatment of choice for end stage liver disease, but availability of liver grafts is still the main limitation to its wider use. Extended criteria donors (ECD) are considered not ideal for several reasons but their use has dramatically grown in the last decades in order to augment the donor liver pool. Due to improvement in surgical and medical strategies, results using grafts from these donors have become acceptable in terms of survival and complications; nevertheless a big debate still exists regarding their selection, discharge criteria and allocation policies. Many studies analyzed the use of these grafts from many points of view producing different or contradictory results so that accepted guidelines do not exist and the use of these grafts is still related to non-standardized policies changing from center to center. The aim of this review is to analyze every step of the donation-transplantation process emphasizing all those strategies, both clinical and experimental, that can optimize results using ECD.
authors.affiliation: Daniele Pezzati, Davide Ghinolfi, Paolo De Simone, Emanuele Balzano, Franco Filipponi, Hepatobiliary Surgery and Liver Transplantation Unit, University of Pisa Medical School Hospital, 56124 Pisa, Italy.
authors.forename: Daniele
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Pezzati
authors.affiliation: Daniele Pezzati, Davide Ghinolfi, Paolo De Simone, Emanuele Balzano, Franco Filipponi, Hepatobiliary Surgery and Liver Transplantation Unit, University of Pisa Medical School Hospital, 56124 Pisa, Italy.
authors.forename: Davide
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Ghinolfi
authors.affiliation: Daniele Pezzati, Davide Ghinolfi, Paolo De Simone, Emanuele Balzano, Franco Filipponi, Hepatobiliary Surgery and Liver Transplantation Unit, University of Pisa Medical School Hospital, 56124 Pisa, Italy.
authors.forename: Paolo
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: De Simone
authors.affiliation: Daniele Pezzati, Davide Ghinolfi, Paolo De Simone, Emanuele Balzano, Franco Filipponi, Hepatobiliary Surgery and Liver Transplantation Unit, University of Pisa Medical School Hospital, 56124 Pisa, Italy.
authors.forename: Emanuele
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Balzano
authors.affiliation: Daniele Pezzati, Davide Ghinolfi, Paolo De Simone, Emanuele Balzano, Franco Filipponi, Hepatobiliary Surgery and Liver Transplantation Unit, University of Pisa Medical School Hospital, 56124 Pisa, Italy.
authors.forename: Franco
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Filipponi
keywords: Extended criteria donors; Liver transplantation; Marginal donors; Results; Survival