Co-Relation between MELD Scoring System prior Living Donor Liver Transplantation and Occurrence of Post-Transplant Biliary Complications

Background Liver transplantation is considered the treatment of choice for patients with end stage liver disease who have failed standard medical and surgical therapy. The development of liver transplantation has revolutionized the field of hepatology and greatly improved the outlook of patients suffering from various liver diseases. The Model for EndStage Liver Disease, or MELD, is a scoring system for assessing the severity of chronic liver disease. It was initially developed to predict mortality within three months of surgery in patients who had undergone a transjugular intrahepatic portosystemic shunt (TIPS) procedure and was subsequently found to be useful in determining prognosis and prioritizing for receipt of a liver transplant. This score is now used by the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) and Eurotransplant for prioritizing allocation of liver transplants instead of the older Child-Pugh score. Biliary tract complications are abundantly occurring post-operative, and they may include a variety of scenarios, as biliary leakage, ischemic bile duct injuries, and biliary stenosis. Aim of the Work Aim of the work is to study the relation between the Model of End Stage Liver Disease (MELD) scoring system and the occurrence of post liver transplantation biliary complications. Patients and Methods A combined retrospective and prospective cohort study was carried out. We retrospectively analyzed the available database of all patients that underwent LDLT, at Ain Shams Center of Organ Transplantation (ASCOT), during the period from January 2013 till May 2019, and suffered from post-operative biliary complications during the first 3 months Post-operative and correlated it with their MELD score before the operation. To do so, we studied 50 patients that are aged more than or equal 18 years old, any gender, that underwent living donor liver transplantation. We excluded patients with cholestatic liver disease and patients that underwent preoperative biliary intervention. All patients were subjected to complete history taking and thorough clinical examination, full laboratory workup, full radiological workup, post-operative cholangiography and Endoscopic retrograde colangio-pancreatography if needed.