Prognostic factors for lethal outcome in early postoperative pediatric liver transplantation

Liver transplantation (LT) is a curative treatment for end-stage liver disease in the childhood. Pediatric LT is one of the most up-to-date and fast-growing areas in contemporary medicine. The main goal in this area is to create predictive models for an onset of complications that would increase survival rate. Infectious complications are the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in all periods after LT. In the present work, using a univariate and bivariate logistic regression analysis estimates of the probabilities of death in the early postoperative period after LT are derived. As predictors for mortality in the constructed logistic models the following parameters have been analyzed: blood plasma levels at 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 5th, 7th and 10th postoperative day of bilirubin, sodium, creatinine, international normalized ratio (INR) of prothrombin time of blood coagulation and model coefficient for end-stage liver disease (MELD). The models were based on experimental data obtained in the University Hospital “Lozenets” – Sofia, Bulgaria.