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Shape up for liver transplant

(China Daily/Agencies)
Updated: 2009-08-19 18:03

Liver transplantation "holds increased risk" in adults who are very thin or very obese before surgery, research shows.

Patients undergoing liver transplantation who are underweight or severely obese experience significantly higher rates of illness and death in comparison with patients in the middle weight categories, the researchers report in the journal Liver Transplantation.

Dr Andre A. S. Dick, of the University of Washington Medical Center, Seattle, and colleagues investigated the impact of pre-transplant body weight on patient survival by reviewing data from the United Network for Organ Sharing on 71,446 liver transplants performed in adults from 1987 through 2007.

They found that subjects who were very thin were more likely to require a second surgery and to die from bleeding complications, compared with "control" patients in the middle weight range.

Transplant patients who were severely obese had higher rates of death from infectious complications and cancer.