Mortality after orthotopic liver transplantation. An analysis of the causes of death in the first 50 liver transplantations in Groningen, The Netherlands.

An analysis was made of the causes of death in 22 of 50 patients receiving consecutive orthotopic liver transplants. A close look at the fatal course of these patients revealed three major patterns: surgical complications (27%), pathology of the hepatic artery anastomosis (23%), and cholestasis (32%). Technical factors were the major reasons for excessive peroperative blood loss, and not the coagulopathy accompanying the liver disease. The etiology of hepatic artery thrombosis is not known. It leads to irreversible damage of the graft, causing death due to acute hepatic failure or to cholangitis and sepsis. The only way to treat patients with this complication is retransplantation. Several factors can induce cholestasis. Retrospectively, it appears that this was mostly due to inappropriate immunosuppression, often a result of the difficult differential diagnosis between rejection and viral infection. Recognition of these three basic patterns should enable us to anticipate their subsequent complications. This may lead to a reduction in morbidity and mortality after liver transplantation.