Incidence, risk factors and influence on survival of infectious complications in liver transplantation

INTRODUCTION. Orthotopic liver transplantation (OLT) is successful therapy for patients with end-stage liver disease. Infection is currently a life-threatening complication for these patients. The aims of this study are to determine the incidence of various infections in patients with OLT, to study overall survival rates and survival as related to individual infections, and to investigate the risk factors associated with first episodes of bacterial (131), fungal (FI), invasive fungal (H) and cytomegalovirus (CMV) infections. METHODS. The study includes 165 OLTs performed in 152 recipients from May 1994 to May 1998. A descriptive analysis estimating the 95% confidence interval was performed with 100 variables stratified according to preoperative, operative and postoperative conditions. Cox regression analysis was used to identify the variables associated with infection. Survival studies were carried out with the Kaplan-Meier method. RESULTS. Among the total, 66% of patients developed infection: 41.8% viral, 33.9% BI, 20.6% FI and 4.2% IFI. One-year and 4-year survival rates after transplantation were 90% and 75%, respectively. All the infections decreased survival. Multivariate analyses identified the following risk factors for the specific infections: BI dialysis, mechanical ventilation, and time of organ ischemia during harvesting; FI - number of hours of surgery and pretransplantation plasma albumin concentrations; IFI - number of blood units transfused, pretransplantation plasma albumin and retransplantation. Cytomegalovirus infection was associated with FI and IFI in the univariate analysis, but the multivariate analysis identified no variables that independently increased the risk of developing this infection.