A Novel Entity Among Vascular Liver Tumors: The First Reported Liver Transplantation. Is It Feasible?

Abstract

Liver transplant could be considered for certain tumors even if there is still dubious indication, as in the case of hepatic small vessels neoplasms that pose a difficult differential diagnosis with liver angiosarcoma. Liver transplant could be the best choice for patients with stable or slow-progressing tumors, for young patients with impaired quality of life, and when it would use organs that would be otherwise discarded but are capable of affording a good function. Vascular tumors are very heterogeneous cancers and our case represents the first description of a new histologic lesion that cannot be included in any of the pre-existing diagnostic categories. In our paper we want to present our decision to transplant a patient in whom the diagnosis was hepatic small vessels neoplasms (but was still in doubt for angiosarcoma as suggested by pathologists form other institutions). Furthermore, we want to highlight that after liver transplant, a new lesion never described before resulted from the specimen analysis that does not fit any of the pathologic diagnostic categories. This finding could open a scenario for additional improvement in molecular analysis in order to differentiate liver vascular tumors or even single lesion histotypes. This article emphasizes how little we know about the real behavior of liver vascular tumors and their clinical and therapeutic outcomes; we want to raise a question about the possibility for liver transplant in the setting of tumors not yet fully known and in which, in cases of diagnostic doubts, this option has been traditionally excluded, possibly bypassing ethical implications by using marginal donors.