Leukocyte reduction during orthotopic liver transplantation and postoperative outcome: a pilot study.

STUDY OBJECTIVE: To investigate the effect of intraoperative leukocyte reduction of administered blood products on the incidence of acute cellular rejection and postoperative patient outcome. DESIGN: Prospective, nonrandomized, historical control study. SETTING: Academic tertiary medical center. PATIENTS: The study group (Group 1) consisted of 30 consecutive adult patients with end-stage liver disease scheduled to undergo orthotopic liver transplantation (OLT) between 1998 and 2000. The historical control group (Group 2) consisted of 30 adult patients with end-stage liver disease matched to study group patients as closely as possible for age, gender, and etiology of liver disease who underwent OLT between 1995 and 1999. INTERVENTIONS: Group 1 patients had all intraoperative allogeneic and cell salvaged blood products leukocyte reduced before administration. Group 2 patients underwent OLT without leukocyte filtration of any administered blood products. MEASUREMENTS: Demographic data were collected for both patient groups and included age, gender, etiology of liver disease, and both intraoperative and postoperative immunosuppression. Demographic allograft donor data for both patient groups were collected and included age, gender, use of vasopressors during procurement, and cold and warm donor organ ischemic times. Outcome variables measured included incidence of acute cellular rejection, length of intensive care unit (ICU) and length of hospital stay, incidence of both graft loss and retransplantation, and mortality. MAIN RESULTS: The incidence of acute cellular rejection was 40% in Group 1 and 66.7% in Group 2 (p = 0.037). Length of ICU stay was 3.0 (2.0, 5.0) days in Group 1 and 4.0 (3.0, 6.0) days in Group 2 (p = 0.16). Length of hospital stay was 14.0 (11.0, 18.0) days in Group 1 and 18.0 (14.0, 27.0) days in Group 2 (p = 0.035). One allograft was lost in Group 2 because of primary nonfunction requiring retransplantation (p = 0.31), and three postoperative deaths occurred in Group 1 as a result of multisystem organ failure (p = 0.08). CONCLUSIONS: Coincident with leukocyte reduction of all administered blood products during OLT, an improved outcome was observed in Group 1 patients as demonstrated by both a decreased incidence of acute cellular rejection and length of hospital stay.