UCLA researchers develop more accurate tool to predict whether liver cancer will recur in transplant patients

UCLA transplant researchers have developed a novel method to more accurately calculate the risk of disease recurring in people with liver cancer who have undergone a liver transplant. The approach gives physicians a new tool to help make treatment and surveillance decisions. The study, led by Dr. Ronald Busuttil, the William P. Longmire, Jr. Chair in Surgery and director of the Pfleger Liver Institute and Dumont–UCLA Transplant and Liver Cancer Centers, was published by the peer-reviewed Journal of the American College of Surgeons. The research team developed a predictive calculator called a nomogram after analyzing 30 years’ worth of data from liver transplants for people with liver cancer. The study drew from records of 865 patients at UCLA between 1984 and 2013, said Dr. Vatche Agopian, an assistant professor of surgery in UCLA’s division of liver transplantation and the study’s first author. Prior to 1996, there were no criteria to guide which liver cancer patients might be good candidates for transplants. Patients with tumors of all sizes and numbers underwent transplants, and many of them suffered early recurrence of the disease. In 1996, guidelines known as the “Milan criteria” were introduced, recommending that transplants be limited to patients who had a single tumor measuring 5 centimeters or less and those who had up to three tumors, as long as no single tumor was larger than 3 centimeters. Agopian said one shortcoming of the Milan criteria was that t...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news