Changing the method by which donated livers are allocated to potential transplant patients appears to have decreased the number of deaths among individuals on the waiting list as well as shortened the time to transplantation, according to a report in the November issue of Archives of Surgery.
Since 1991, the number of liver transplantation candidates on the waiting list for donor organs has increased by a factor of ten, while the number of donor livers has only doubled, according to background information in the article. In 1998, four categories of medical urgency were established to prioritize patients with end-stage liver disease on the waiting list; as the list lengthened, duration on the list became the major way to sort patients within each category. On Feb. 27, 2002, the Model for End-stage Liver Disease (MELD) score—an objective score based on several laboratory values—was adopted in an attempt to allocate donor organs more equitably and based on medical urgency.
Mary T. Austin, M.D., M.P.H., and colleagues at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, Tenn., studied the outcomes associated with this change in policy by studying patients on the waiting list from March 1, 1999, to July 30, 2004—36 months before and 29 months after adoption of the MELD scoring system. Information about 60,392 individuals age 18 or older on the waiting list at any point during this period was obtained from the United Network for Organ Sharing data file.
The change in policy was associated with an immediate increase in number of deaths among individuals on the waiting list, from about 11 deaths to 13 deaths per 1,000 registrants per month. However, this was followed by a decline over time of about .09 deaths per 1,000 individuals per month.