Liver retransplantation: Timing is equally important

BACKGROUND AND AIM: To evaluate the effect of transplantation interval on patient and graft survival in liver retransplantation (reLT) using meta-analytical techniques. METHODS: Literature search was undertaken until January 2022 to identify comparative studies evaluating patient survival rates, graft survival rates, and the interval time. Pooled hazard ratio (HR) or risk ratio (RR) and 95% confidence intervals (95% CI) were calculated with either the fixed or random effect model. RESULTS: The 12 articles were included in this meta-analysis. The late reLT survival rate is better than the early reLT in the 30 days group, and there is no statistical significance in other time groups. The patient survival was significantly higher in late reLT than early reLT at 1 and 5 years (respectively: RR, 0.81 [95% CI, 0.73–0.89]; RR, 0.64 [95% CI, 0.46–0.88]). The graft survival was significantly higher in late reLT than early reLT at 1 year (RR, 0.75 [95% CI, 0.63–0.89]). The risk of death after reLT in early group was 1.43 times higher than that in late group (HR, 1.43 [95% CI, 1.21–1.71]). CONCLUSIONS: Late reLT had significantly better survival rates than early reLT, and the transplantation interval was more reasonable to divide the early or late groups by 30 days.