Active clinical trials for "Liver Failure"

The PALF study group began with 20 sites and now continues with 12 sites (11 in the United States and 1 in Canada) in the new funding period. The primary objective of the Pediatric Acute Liver Failure (PALF) study is to collect, maintain, analyze, and report clinical, epidemiological, and outcome data in children with ALF, including information derived from biospecimens.

Hepatitis B accounts for approximately 5000 deaths per year in the United States. Liver transplantation offers the only hope for patients who develop end-stage liver disease. Early results of liver transplantation for hepatitis B were poor with recurrence rate of 80% and 1-year survival of only 50%. Recent studies found that preventive therapy using hepatitis B immune globulin (HBIG) or antiviral medications such as lamivudine can reduce the recurrence rate to roughly 30% with accompanying improvement in survival. However, HBIG when given as intravenous infusion in high doses is very expensive, while long-term use of lamivudine is associated with drug resistance. Some studies found that preventive therapy using both HBIG and lamivudine may decrease recurrence rate to less than 10% but the dose and duration of HBIG needed when used in combination with lamivudine is not clear. Adefovir, a new antiviral medication, is effective against lamivudine resistant hepatitis B but its role in liver transplantation is uncertain because of the risk of kidney damage. Many studies showed that the risk of recurrent hepatitis B is related to the viral load before transplant. Thus, it may be possible to tailor the preventive therapy according to the risk. The aim of this study is to establish the most cost-effective preventive therapy for recurrent hepatitis B after liver transplantation.

This study aimed to determine high-density lipoprotein (HDL) subfraction profile and HDL-associated enzyme changes in liver failure patients and healthy donors.

In recent years, several scoring systems have been developed aimed at predicting early post-LT graft function. However, many of them showed poor efficacy when long-term survivals were tested. Moreover, the necessity to find an easy-to-use score represents another obstacle, with several scores composed by numerous, difficult to find, variables. Recently, the pre-LT Balance of Risk (BAR) and the post-LT Comprehensive Complication Index (CCI) have been created, but their external validation and integration in this setting is lacking. This study aims at constructing an easy-to-use score system based on the combination of a small number of pre- and immediately post-liver transplant (LT) independent variables, in order to accurately predict long-term graft survival after LT.

The study includes two study parts in which blood is collected from the patients. Study part A (observational study, already received positive ethics committee vote; Our sign: 12-330): Use of blood samples gathered during routine blood withdrawal Study part B (interventional study in the sense of additional blood samples but without an investigational product): Optional, for further pharmacokinetic questions: blood withdrawal with a maximum of 20 ml ( ten tubes of 2 ml each) within a maximal study length of four weeks. The primary objective of this study is to gain an overview about drug concentrations in plasma and/or cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), in order to determine pharmacokinetics of drugs in patients. Any drug may be tested, however the initial focus is on antiinfective, antineoplastic, and antipsychotic drugs. Many published studies show that there is a profound lack of information on pharmacokinetics and interactions of many commonly used drugs in clinical routine, and that drug concentrations, if controlled by therapeutic drug monitoring, are not in the therapeutic range (provided that such ranges are known at all).

Standard anesthetic management of liver transplantation patients includes a general anesthetic using multiple drugs, including the neuromuscular relaxant rocuronium. Pharmacokinetic modelling of this agent has been poorly described during liver transplantation, which impacts on appropriate dosing of this agent within this population where plasma concentrations can vary with fluid shifts and hepatic drug metabolism during the various phases of liver transplantation. Plasma drug and drug metabolite concentrations will be measured using the technique of solid phase micro-extraction (SPME). Measuring and correlating the levels of rocuronium and other liver metabolites with the degree of post transplantation hepatic dysfunction may serve as a simple and cost-effective marker to aid diagnosis, identify those at risk of hepatic dysfunction and potentially grade the severity

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.

The aim of the investigators' study is to elucidate the relationship between a functional liver test (e.g., ICG) and the PREOPERATIVE value of portal hypertension in the patients with impaired liver function from alcoholic and non-alcoholic aetiologies. Alcoholic and viral cirrhosis present important differences in terms of cellular mechanisms responsible for the disease progression with a distinct and unique gene expression pattern that regulates the type of inflammatory response. These differences probably influence the hepatic functional reserve and the onset of portal hypertension at a comparable clinical and biological level of derangement and the investigators may expect significant differences in the recovery from hepatectomy. The investigators' hypothesis is that at a comparable ICGR-15 rate non-viral cirrhotic liver presents higher portal pressure values and the investigators also argue that alcoholic cirrhotic patients would tolerate a larger hepatic resection than would viral cirrhotic do.

The overarching objective of the research program entitled ELIPTO (Enhancing Liver Insufficiency and Postoperative Transplantation Outcomes) (www.elipto.ca) is to improve the perioperative care of liver transplant recipients. One of this program's purposes is to better define the effects of intraoperative hemodynamic management on postoperative outcomes in adult liver transplant recipients. In this study, the incidence of postoperative complications within this population will be defined in Canada and France and the association between intraoperative hemodynamics and postoperative outcomes will be measured. Liver transplantation improves the survival of patients with end-stage liver disease (ESLD). It is the second most transplanted organ with a continuously increasing annual number of transplantations, an observation partly explained by an endemic ESLD etiology in the United States, the obesity-related non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) cirrhosis. In recent decades, although sicker patients are prioritized, survival has improved possibly through an overall improvement in the quality of care. However, postoperative complications have concomitantly increased. On average, liver transplant recipients suffer from more than three postoperative complications, mainly infectious, pulmonary, renal or graft-related, two thirds of them being severe. In a low-risk patients cohort, close to 60% of all patients suffered from at least one severe complication up to 6 months after surgery. Such complications increase mortality, readmissions and cost of care. Organs available for transplantation are a scarce resource; up to 10% of grafts are no longer functional after one year. Interventions that improve patients' postoperative and graft outcomes are needed and few perioperative ones are supported by high-quality evidence.

The purpose of this study is to determine if medically tailored meals provided for either 2 weeks or 4 weeks (1 meal per day) to a Kaiser Permanente Colorado (KPCO) member after hospital discharge will improve their health. Medically tailored meals (MTM) are meals that are approved by a dietitian and shown to help people with certain health conditions.