What is it about?
Patients with liver cirrhosis have an increased risk to develop liver cancer. The treatment of this condition is very complex. Liver transplantation is an excellent option for many of these patients as not only the liver tumor is removed most radically but also the underlying liver cirrhosis from which arises a substantial risk of cancer recurrence over the next years.
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Why is it important?
The general population, and thus patients with liver cancer are constantly aging, and there is data showing that by 2030 more than half of all HCC patients will be older than 65 at the time of diagnosis. There is no fixed age cut-off to receive a liver transplant. Nonetheless, due to the severe organ shortage in liver transplantation and an assumed higher risk and lesser benefit of a liver transplant in elderly patients, the transplant community has been rather hesitant to serve elderly patients with a liver transplant. The purpose of our analysis based on our center experience was to show that liver cancer patients older than 65 and even 70 years have a similar good outcome after liver transplantation compared to younger ones and that, for this reason, older age per se should not be considered a contraindication to liver transplantation.
Perspectives
With these encouraging results in elderly liver cancer patients in mind, we will carefully pursue our path of considerately offering a transplant perspective to an aging liver cancer population. A continuing effort, ideally together with other transplant centers, is needed to further evaluate this approach.
Jens Mittler
Johannes Gutenberg Universitat Mainz
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Elderly Patients with Hepatocellular Carcinoma benefit from Liver Transplantation as much as younger ones, Liver Cancer, December 2022, Karger Publishers,
DOI: 10.1159/000528830.
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