Comparative Study on Liver Transplantation with and without Hepatocellular Carcinoma with Cirrhosis: Analysis of Meld, Waiting Time and Survival

BACKGROUND Liver transplantation is the usual treatment for hepatocellular carcinoma. AIM To analyze the MELD score, waiting time and three month and one year survival for liver transplantation in cirrhotic patients affected by hepatocellular carcinoma or not. METHODS This was a retrospective, observational and analytical study of 93 patients submitted to liver transplantation. RESULTS There were 28 hepatocellular carcinoma and 65 non-hepatocellular carcinoma patients with no differences related to age and sex distribution. The main causes of cirrhosis on hepatocellular carcinoma were hepatitis C virus (57.1%) and hepatitis B virus (28.5%), more frequent than non-hepatocellular carcinoma patients, which presented 27.7% and 4.6% respectively. The physiological and exception MELD score on hepatocellular carcinoma were 11.9 and 22.3 points. On non-hepatocellular carcinoma, it was 19.4 points, higher than the physiological MELD and lower than the exception MELD on hepatocellular carcinoma. The waiting time for transplantation was 96.2 days for neoplasia, shorter than the waiting time for non-neoplasia patients, which was 165.6 days. Three month and one year survival were 85.7% and 78.6% for neoplasia patients, similar to non-neoplasia, which were 77% and 75.4%. CONCLUSION Hepatocellular carcinoma patients presented lower physiological MELD score, higher exception MELD score and shorter waiting time for transplantation when compared to non-hepatocellular carcinoma patients. Three month and one year survival were the same between the groups.