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International Registry of Hepatic Tumors in Liver Transplantation
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| Tumor Type | Sample Size | 12 Months | 24 Months | 36 Months | 48 Months | 60 Months | 72 Months |
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All | 1437 | 0.777 | 0.679 | 0.625 | 0.590 | 0.548 | 0.518 | | Incidental | 450 | 0.837 | 0.752 | 0.687 | 0.640 | 0.581 | 0.550 | | Known | 976 | 0.748 | 0.643 | 0.595 | 0.567 | 0.534 | 0.504 |
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The International Registry of Hepatic Tumors in Liver Transplantation was established in 1992 to determine tumor characteristics of importance and eventually the impact of adjunct therapies for patient outcomes.
The first report was given to the American Surgical Association in 1998. It was based on 422 patients with hepatocellular carcinoma. It showed for the first time that tumor differentiation may independently predict outcome.
When transplantation was first developed in the late 1960s, hepatic malignancies were thought to be the ideal indication for transplantation. However, it was quickly discovered that the majority of recipients who survived the surgery ended up with recurrences.
As liver transplantation became an accepted therapy in the early 1980s, malignancies were replaced with benign disease as the major indication for transplantation. Dr. Ron Busuttil and Dr. Goran Klintmalm attempted to obtain external funding for a multi-center trial of adjunct tumor therapy in liver transplantation, but soon realized this was not likely to happen in the foreseeable future.
Reports on hepatic malignancies and liver transplantation were coming from single programs with a limited patient base and consequently difficult to generalize. Therefore, the only answer for the many questions that were being asked was to establish a registry of hepatic malignancies in liver transplantation to determine not only what the predictors of outcome would be, but equally as important, what adjunct therapy may have decisive influence on the outcome for these patients.
With the help of the participating centers, the registry has developed a database that has delivered some interesting and important results. The registry has no external funding.
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