Study of Liver Transplant Rejection in Alcoholism-Induced Cirrhosis

Rejection is the most usual cause of primary dysfunction of hepatic allograft transplants. Acute rejection (AR) often occurs in the early post-transplantation weeks, with an incidence of 12%-19%. Chronic rejection (CR) is less usual (2.5%-17%) and irreversible. Our aim was to determine the incidence of AR and CR in patients who underwent transplantaton due to alcoholism-induced cirrhosis and the survival of these groups. We undertook a retrospective study of the 93 patients who received a liver transplant due to hepatic cirrhosis between 2005 and 2012. AR occurred in 23.7% of cases, and CR in 11.8%. The median time from implantation to the appearance of AR was 34.5 days, and for CR it was 334 days. The survival of the patients with AR and CR showed no significant differences as compared with the control group (P =.77). From our clinical appraisal, symptoms of previous AR may lead to CR, although the relationship was not significant.