Can living donor liver transplantation provide similar outcomes to deceased-donor liver transplantation for hepatocellular carcinoma? A systematic review and meta-analysis

BACKGROUND AND AIM: A potential solution to the deceased organ shortage is to include live organ donations and to identify patients with lower rates of HCC recurrence to fairly allocate liver grafts. Our aims were to detect the long-term outcomes of LDLT versus DDLT for HCC and predictors of recurrence after transplantation. METHODS: PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, Cochrane library were searched for eligible studies from inception to July 2021 and a systematic review and meta-analysis were done. RESULTS: 35 studies with a total of 7822 patients were included. The 1-, 3-, 4 year-OS showed trivial improvement for LDLT recipients. However, the two modalities had similar 5-, 6- and 10-year OS. A significant improvement in the ITT-OS was observed for LDLT recipients. Regarding the DFS and recurrence after transplantation, no significant difference was observed between LDLT and DDLT. In addition to that, the pooled hazard ratio of the included studies showed that Milan criteria, level of AFP, presence of vascular invasion, tumor differentiation were significant predictors of recurrence. CONCLUSION: The cancer biology (not the graft type) is the most important determinant of recurrence and survival after LT. However, LDLT provided much better survival benefits to HCC patients especially in regions that suffer from low deceased organ availability. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12072-022-10435-3.