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Updated: Aug 7, 2026

Porcine Liver Transplantation Without Veno-Venous Bypass As an Extended Criteria Donor Model
Published on: August 17, 2022
Ascites, but not hyponatremia, is associated with high intraoperative transfusion and vasopressor requirements during
1Department of Anesthesiology, David Geffen School of Medicine, UCLA, Los Angeles, California 90095-1778, USA, and 2nd Affiliated Hospital, Kunming, China. vxia@mednet.ucla.edu
Background:
We previously demonstrated that patients with high MELD scores required significantly higher volumes of blood transfusion and vasopressor usage during orthotopic liver transplantation (OLT) compared with patients with low MELD scores. Now we investigated whether hyponatremia or ascites were associated with increased transfusion and vasopressor requirements during OLT.
Methods:
Medical records of 192 OLT patients between January 1, 2004, and May 5, 2005, were retrospectively reviewed. Intraoperative transfusion of red blood cells (RBC) or fresh frozen plasma (FFP) and administration of vasopressors were compared.
Results:
As expected, patients with high (>30) MELD scores were associated with higher requirements for intraoperative transfusion and vasopressors than those with low (
Conclusion:
Although hyponatremia and ascites are indicators for liver disease severity, ascites, but not hyponatremia, is associated with increased intraoperative transfusion and vasopressor requirements during OLT.
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