Patient and graft survival not significantly different from daytime, weekday procedures
WEDNESDAY, May 2 (HealthDay News) -- Performing liver transplantation procedures at night or on weekends does not appear to affect patient or liver graft survival, according to research published in the May issue of Liver Transplantation.
To investigate the impact of nighttime and weekend liver transplantation on graft and patient survival, Eric S. Orman, M.D., of the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, and colleagues conducted a retrospective review using data from the United Network for Organ Sharing database, which included 94,768 adult liver transplants performed from 1987 to 2010.
For liver transplantation procedures performed at night, the researchers found that the 30-day, 90-day, and one-year patient survival rates were 96, 93, and 86 percent, respectively. Patient survival rates for weekend operations were 95, 92, and 86 percent, respectively. None of these rates were significantly different from those achieved after daytime or weekday transplantation procedures. The graft failure rate was similar for weekend versus weekday transplants at 30- and 90-days, but was modestly increased at 365 days (hazard ratio, 1.05; 95 percent confidence interval, 1.01 to 1.11).
"According to a large multicenter registry database containing nearly 100,000 liver transplants and spanning more than 20 years, neither nighttime liver transplantation nor weekend liver transplantation has an adverse impact on patient or graft survival," the authors write.
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