Objectives: Congestive hepatopathy as a result of advanced heart failure correlates with poor outcomes. Thus, risk-scoring systems have been established to assess the risks for cardiac surgery and hearttransplant, although these systems were originally designed to measure mortality risk in patients with end-stage liver disease. We compared the scores for the Child-Pugh criteria andstandardandmodifiedModels for End-Stage LiverDisease to evaluate the effect of preoperative liver dysfunction on postoperative outcomes inpatients with heart failure who underwent heart transplant.
Materials and methods: Data of 60 consecutive patients who underwent orthotopic heart transplant were analyzed from a historical cohort study from January 1, 2015, to December 31, 2018. We calculated the scores for Child-Pugh criteria and the standard and modified Models for End-Stage Liver Disease.
Results: Of the 60 total patients, 48 were male patients, with a median age of 43 years (range, 13-69 years). Twenty patients died before the end of the study. The causes of death were cardiac, liver, and renal diseases. The mortality risk increased 25% (interquartile range, 0.05-0.51) for the patients with 1 point higher score compared with the patients with 1 point lower score based on a modified Model for End-Stage Liver Disease (P = .01).
Conclusions: Preoperative liver dysfunction has a significant effect on patient survival. The modified Modelfor End-Stage LiverDisease scoring system could be an effective predictor of perioperative risk stratification for patients with congestive hepatopathy who are undergoing cardiac transplant.