Post-Transplant Outcomes in Older Patients with Hepatocellular Carcinoma (HCC) are Driven by non-HCC Factors. Liver transplantation : official publication of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases and the International Liver Transplantation Society Adeniji, N. n., Arjunan, V. n., Prabhakar, V. n., Mannalithara, A. n., Ghaziani, T. n., Ahmed, A. n., Kwo, P. n., Nguyen, M. n., Melcher, M. L., Busuttil, R. W., Florman, S. S., Haydel, B. n., Ruiz, R. M., Klintmalm, G. B., Lee, D. D., Taner, C. B., Hoteit, M. A., Verna, E. C., Halazun, K. J., Tevar, A. D., Humar, A. n., Chapman, W. C., Vachharajani, N. n., Aucejo, F. n., Nydam, T. L., Markmann, J. F., Mobley, C. n., Ghobrial, M. n., Langnas, A. N., Carney, C. A., Berumen, J. n., Schnickel, G. T., Sudan, D. L., Hong, J. C., Rana, A. n., Jones, C. M., Fishbein, T. M., Agopian, V. n., Dhanasekaran, R. n. 2020

Abstract

The incidence of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is growing in the US, especially among the elderly. Older patients are increasingly getting transplanted for HCC, but the impact of advancing age on long-term post-transplant outcomes is not clear. To study this, we used data from the US Multicenter HCC Transplant Consortium (UMHTC) of 4980 patients. We divided the patients into 4 groups by age at transplantation- 18-64 (n = 4001), 65-69 (n = 683), 70-74 (n = 252) and = 75 years (n = 44). There were no differences in HCC tumor stage, type of bridging locoregional therapy or explant residual tumor between the groups. Older age was confirmed to be an independent and significant predictor of overall survival even after adjusting for demographic, etiologic and cancer-related factors on multivariable analysis. A dose-response effect of age on survival was observed, with every 5-year increase in age over 50 years resulting in an absolute increase of 8.3% in the mortality rate. Competing risk analysis revealed that older patients experienced higher rates of non-HCC-related mortality (p = 0.004), and not HCC-related death (p = 0.24). To delineate the precise cause of death, we further analyzed a single-center cohort of patients transplanted for HCC (n = 302). Patients older than 65 years had a higher incidence of de-novo cancer (18.1% vs 7.6%, p = 0.006) after transplantation and higher overall cancer-related mortality (14.3% vs 6.6%, p = 0.03). CONCLUSION: Even carefully selected elderly patients with HCC have significantly worse post-transplant survival, which are mostly driven by non-HCC related causes. Minimizing immunosuppression and closer surveillance for de novo cancers can potentially improve outcomes in elderly patients transplanted for HCC.

View details for DOI 10.1002/lt.25974

View details for PubMedID 33306254