Assessment of Liver Transplant Eligibility in Chronic Liver Disease Patients: A Cross-Sectional Study From a Tertiary Care Hospital of Pakistan

Introduction: The burden of chronic liver disease (CLD) is increasing globally and the ultimate treatment is a liver transplant. As Pakistan is a developing country, liver transplantation is not easily available due to limited resources. This study aims to assess the patients with CLD for liver transplantation and to find the frequency of eligible candidates for liver transplantation. Methods: A cross-sectional observational study was conducted on patients with CLD from June 2022 to December 2022. Total bilirubin, serum creatinine complete blood count, serum electrolytes, and international normalised ratio (INR) were done. The Model for End -Stage Liver Disease (MELD) score was calculated and the frequency of eligible patients for liver transplant was determined. Data was entered and analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 22 (IBM Corp., Armonk, NY, USA). Results: In our study, 149 patients were enrolled with a mean age of 46.81 +/- 15.7 years. There were 58.7% male and 41.6% female patients. The mean duration of liver cirrhosis was 18.22 +/- 11.7 months. The mean MELD score was 20.71 +/- 5.2. The common liver cirrhosis stages were stage II and stage II was found in 32.2% of each. Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) was present in 15.4% of patients. There were 25.5% of patients eligible for liver transplants. Conclusion: In our study, we found that significant numbers of patients with CLD were eligible for liver transplantation.