Results good with combined liver-kidney transplant

NEW YORK, Aug 24 (Reuters) Survival rates and organ function are excellent in patients who undergo a combined liver and kidney transplant, according to a new report.

Dr Richard Ruiz and colleagues from University of California, Los Angeles, reviewed their 16-year experience with 98 patients who received the double transplants.

Thirty-one patients died during an average follow-up of 36 months, the team reports in the Archives of Surgery. Overall survival rates were 76 per cent at one year, 72 per cent at three years, and 70 per cent at five years.

As for the organs themselves, liver graft survival rates were 70 per cent, 65 per cent, and 65 per cent, respectively, for the same intervals, the results indicate, and kidney graft survival rates were 76 per cent, 72 per cent, and 70 per cent, respectively.

''Combined liver and kidney transplantation offers the best option for patients with simultaneous chronic liver and kidney failure when it is performed at a high-volume academic transplant center,'' the authors conclude.

Patients who underwent the double transplant recently have improved overall survival and graft survival, they add, ''most likely'' thanks to better care around the time of the procedure, the shorter time between obtaining donor organs and transplantation, and more effective anti-rejection therapy.

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