Liver Transplantation in Acute-on-Chronic Liver Failure: Excellent Outcome and Difficult Posttransplant Course

BACKGROUND: Acute-on-chronic liver failure (ACLF) patients have high mortality in a short period of time. This study aimed to compare the prognosis of transplanted ACLF patients to that of nontransplanted ACLF patients and decompensated cirrhosis recipients. METHODS: Clinical data of 29 transplanted ACLF patients, 312 nontransplanted ACLF patients, and 60 transplanted decompensated cirrhosis patients were retrospectively collected. Propensity score matching (PSM) analysis was used to match patients between different groups. RESULTS: After PSM, the 90-day and 1-year survival of transplanted ACLF patients was significantly longer than that of nontransplant controls. Although the 90-day survival and 1-year survival of ACLF recipients was similar to that of decompensated cirrhosis controls, ACLF recipients were found to have longer mechanical ventilation, longer intensive care unit (ICU) stay, longer hospital stay, higher incidence of tracheotomy, higher expense, and higher morbidity of complication than matched decompensated cirrhosis controls. The 90-day and 1-year survival of transplanted ACLF grade 2–3 patients was also significantly longer than that of nontransplanted controls. CONCLUSIONS: Liver transplantation can strongly improve the prognosis of ACLF patients. Despite having more burdens (including longer mechanical ventilation, longer ICU stay, higher incidence of tracheotomy, longer hospital stay, higher hospitalization expense, and higher complication morbidity), ACLF recipients can obtain similar short-term and long-term survival to decompensated cirrhosis recipients. For severe ACLF patients, liver transplantation can also significantly improve their short-term and long-term survival.