Active clinical trials for "End Stage Liver Disease"

This two-year pilot study will test whether a one-page "Jumpstart Form" will affect goals-of-care discussions in the hospital. This form will be provided to clinicians and will include patient-specific information about preferences for goals-of-care communication and for care, as well as tips to improve this communication. Jumpstart forms will also be provided to patients or, if they are unable to communicate, their surrogates/family members. The information on the form will be obtained from questionnaires. The form is tailored to help patients and surrogates talk with clinicians about goals of care. This study is based on a successful application of Jumpstart Form in the outpatient clinic setting.

Acute-on-chronic liver failure (ACLF) is an acute deterioration of chronic liver diseases, which progresses rapidly, with a mortality rate of more than 50%.MELD score is used to evaluate the patients' condition. However, MELD score only concerned about the variables of total bilirubin, international normalize ratio (INR) and creatinine which is not enough to access ACLF patients' condition accurately. Scholars of US and China suggested to divided ACLF patients into 3 subgroups base on the different "chronic liver disease" . Type A ACLF patients have chronic liver disease without cirrhosis. Type B ACLF patients with compensated cirrhosis, while type C ACLF patients with decompensated cirrhosis. Currently, no studies have assessed the prognosis of different types of ACLF patients, especially for HBV-related ACLF patients. Investigators conducted a retrospective study which enrolls HBV-related ACLF patients between January 2010 and March 2018 in the Third Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University. Clinical data, survival time and information regarding liver transplantation after enrolment were collected. A nomogram was formulated based on the results of multivariable Cox regression analysis. The performance of the nomogram was evaluated by the concordance index (C-index) and assessed by comparing nomogram-predicted vs observed Kaplan-Meier estimates of survival probability, and bootstraps with 1000 resamples were applied to these activities. Comparisons between the nomogram, MELD Score，MELD-Na Score and CTP Score in the entire population were performed and were tested by the C-index. A larger C-index indicated more accurate prognostic stratification.

Liver transplantation (LT) is one of the widely recognised and leading treatments for end-stage liver disease. Nutrition impacts its success. Total parenteral nutrition (TPN) is usually prescribed for patients recommended prolonged fasting after LT. The supplement of SMOFlipid (soybean oil, MCT oil, olive oil, and fish oil) is easily metabolised to produce energy, and it possesses anti-inflammatory effects; however, SMOFlipid emulsion use raises concerns regarding coagulopathy after LT. This study investigated the postoperative correlation between SMOFlipid and coagulation in LT.

Patients of acute & chronic liver failure have long been assumed to have coagulopathy & are given blood products prophylactically as well as during various interventions. But these patients rarely have spontaneous bleed except variceal bleed. Conventional coagulation parameters are insufficient to assess coagulation status of these patients because they reflect only a certain element of coagulation cascade while thromboelastography (TEG) gives a comprehensive report of hemostatic profile including platelet function. Studies using TEG have suggested that defects in prohemostatic drivers are counterbalanced by changes in antihemostatic drivers creating a rebalance in these patients. Acute on chronic failure is a entity with acute decompensation on underlying chronic liver failure. Since there is paucity of data regarding coagulation abnormalities in these patient, study is needed to assess predictability power of TEG in these patients with respect to coagulation abnormalities in patient with ALF and CLD ( cirrhosis) and healthy controls.

Postoperative pain caused by surgery-associated tissue injury is a major concern for all the clinical practitioners. Because it affects multiple systems and induces physiological, immunological and psychological changes. Previous literature showed surgical injury induces a systemic inflammatory metabolic-endocrine response that is proportional to the severity of the surgical stress. In surgeries such as liver transplantation, the patients suffer not only from postoperative pain but also an additional oxidative stress caused by ischemia reperfusion. Previous report have proved that an adequate postoperative pain control improves the recovery and reduces the inflammatory cascade by suppression of physiological and psychological stresses. However, the effect of postoperative pain management on ischemia reperfusion injury is unclear so far. In this three year study, we plan to continue our previous study to test the following two hypothesis: (1) postoperative pain exacerbate remote organ injury caused by ischemia reperfusion, (2) the interaction of different antinociceptive modalities on ischemia reperfusion injury.

Living donor liver transplantation (LDLT), involves complex systems and processes of care that are particularly vulnerable to medical errors and preventable complications. This ancillary study of the Adult-to-Adult Living Liver Transplantation Cohort Study (A2ALL) will focus on conducting a proactive, systematic, and comprehensive assessment of the vulnerabilities in the systems and process of LDLT care to reduce medical errors and preventable complications thereby improving the safety of LDLT care. This project will address an important gap in the knowledge needed to achieve high quality and safe LDLT care of patients by developing a process to: 1) proactively, systematically and comprehensively identify areas of vulnerabilities in LDLT care that can result in medical errors, 2) design and implement solutions to mitigate these weaknesses, and 3) evaluate the effectiveness of these solutions to improve the safety of LDLT care by measuring clinical and process outcomes before and after solution implementation across four A2ALL participating transplant centers

The purpose of this study is to gather information regarding the use of Myfortic, Prograf, and corticosteroids in new liver transplant recipients. These three medicines help to prevent the body from rejecting the transplanted liver. The information the investigators are obtaining is data relating to the process of Myfortic absorption by the body, its distribution in the body, the breakdown of Myfortic in the body, and its elimination from the body. This absorption, distribution, breakdown, and elimination is called pharmacokinetics.

Ascites is the most common complication of cirrhosis, and its development is associated with substantially increased mortality. Ascites infection including spontaneous bacterial peritonitis (SBP), bacterascites and fungal infections. SBP is one of the most feared complications of ascites. The EASL guidelines recommend that diagnostic criteria of SBP is defined on the ascitic fluid polymorphonuclear leucocytes (PMN) count ≥250 cell/μl, with or without ascites fluid positive culture. However, in clinical practice. Up to 30% of hospitalized patients are considered as suspicious SBP, and treated as SBP without a laboratory-confirmed cause of infection. and is present in 10-30% of all hospitalized patients with ascites. Besides, fungal infection in ascites was aslo related to high mortality in cirrhosis patients. Thus, to diagnose ascites infection promptly is the key step to prevent the complication. Since, the sensitivity of bacterial culture is limited even if ascites is directly injected into blood culture bottles at the besides. New method to identified the pathogen is needed. Here, we aim to use metagenomic next-generation sequencing(mNGS) to provide the first-ever demonstration of precision medicine for the diagnosis of ascites infection in hospitalized patients, with immediate impact on clinical care and patients outcomes. The method of mNGS is undertaken by BGI Genomics Company which is a licensed clinical diagnostic laboratory in China. In this multicenter and prospective clinical study, we are planning to detect ascites sample by mNGS and compare the performance of mNGS and routine microbiological testing. Ultimately, we aim to improve the diagnosis of ascites infection and improve patients' outcomes.

The goal of this observational study was to evaluate the impact of the adoption of the MELD system to prioritize patients on the waiting list for OLT on survival for 1000 consecutive liver transplantations. Survival was evaluated on the waiting list, one month, and one year after the transplantation. Another goal was to look at blood losses and transfusion requirement after the adoption of the MELD score. The hypothesis was the MELD system will ameliorate the survival rate on the waiting, but the post-OLT will be worse. Blood losses and transfusions could be worse with the MELD system.

This study attempts to clarify the pathophysiology of haemostasis and haematopoiesis in relation to the evidence of sepsis in liver disease, and compares the accuracy of various available laboratory tests in assessment of these patients. Further research is needed for proper understanding of the influence of sepsis on coagulation disorders in ACLF (Acute on Chronic Liver Failure) patients in particular, to correctly identify the type and optimal quantity of blood product requirement in at risk patients. Thromboelastography (TEG) /Sonoclot have been proposed as a superior tool to rapidly diagnose and help guide resuscitation with blood products. Secondly, the study of derangement in coagulopathy after the onset of sepsis is of paramount importance because of increased mortality after the onset of sepsis. In the present study, patients with ACLF (Acute on Chronic Liver Failure) without evidence of sepsis on admission will be included in the study cohort, and will undergo a baseline diagnostic workup as described. They will be followed for development of any signs of infection after hospitalization. Then the effect of sepsis on their coagulation and haematopoietic cellular responses will be assessed. Thus the effect of sepsis on the progression and outcome of patients with ACLF (Acute on Chronic Liver Failure) will be studied.