Exchange transfusion in hepatic coma: factors affecting results, with long-term follow-up data

1. Exchange transfusion in our experience has produced a response in 42 per cent of the patients. 2. Complicating factors, primarily sepsis, have been responsible for a 50 per cent mortality in those patients who initially respond, yielding a survival rate of 21 per cent. 3. In a select group of patients with infectious hepatitis under the age of twenty-five years, the survival rate was 37.5 per cent. 4. Excess bilirubin and ammonia rebound after exchange transfusions indicates a grave prognosis. 5. All survivors have normal results on liver function studies.