Kidney utilization for simultaneous liver-kidney transplantation (SLK) has seen a significant increase in recent years, driven by the rising prevalence of renal dysfunction among liver transplant candidates. However, a substantial proportion of SLK recipients experience native kidney function recovery post-transplant, rendering the kidney transplant unnecessary. This case report presents a remarkable instance of native renal function recovery in a SLK recipient, discovered eleven years after transplantation, when the transplanted kidney was found to have undergone extensive fibrosis and atrophy, masked by native kidney recovery. This case highlights the challenges posed by evaluation of SLK candidates and the need for improved tools to predict native kidney recovery. Safety net mechanism for those who do not recover kidney function should be utilized more to avoid the unnecessary utilization of scarce kidney allografts, which are critically needed for waitlisted patients with kidney failure.
With improvements in medical management and surgical technique in the field of solid organ transplantation, many historically prominent causes of liver allograft injury have been ameliorated or, in the case of Hepatitis C virus, eliminated altogether. In this transformed clinical landscape, antibody-mediated rejection (AMR) has emerged as a defining barrier to maintenance of long-term liver allograft function. The liver's unique anatomy, high regenerative capacity, and tolerogenic immunological environment tend to mitigate the severest AMR manifestations. Consequently, the clinical importance of AMR in the liver has been recognized more slowly than for other solid organ allografts. Significant strides have been made in elucidating clinical and histopathologic features of acute and chronic liver AMR, with the Banff 2016 criteria among the most notable. However, current histopathologic definitions of AMR are lacking in sensitivity and specificity. C4d staining is an imperfect biological surrogate for antibody-mediated injury, and suffers from significant technical limitations. The frequent co-occurrence of T cell mediated rejection and non-immunologic allograft damage (including recurrence of primary disease) also hinders definitive identification of AMR and results in misattribution of its effects. The goal of this review is to summarize the current understanding of AMR in the context of liver transplantation, including risk factors, pathogenesis, and current diagnostic and treatment strategies. Potential directions of future research are also addressed.
Hepatopulmonary syndrome (HPS) is a rare pulmonary complication of cirrhosis for which the only curative treatment is liver transplantation (LT). Patients with severe HPS prior to LT are at high risk of postoperative complications and mortality, and may develop refractory HPS after LT. To date, no therapeutic strategy has been validated for these patients. To our knowledge, we describe the first case of successful use of high-flow nasal cannula oxygen therapy for severe post-LT hypoxemia in a 23-year-old adult.