Surveillance of Rejection After Intestinal Transplantation Using an Image Enhanced Endoscopy "VENCH" Scoring System

Graft rejection after intestinal transplantation remains challenging. We aimed to use endoscopy for rejection prediction.

Patients ≥7 years old who underwent intestinal transplantation between November 2016 and September 2019 were prospectively enrolled. Magnifying endoscopy under narrow-band imaging was performed through ileostomy. Endoscopic findings were reported as five components (each graded from 0-2): "V" (villi appearance), "E" (erythema), "N" (capillary network), "C" (crypt widening), and "H" (heterogeneity). The correlation between histological severity and endoscopic score was analyzed.

Ninety-nine endoscopic biopsies from three female and one male patient were analyzed. The mean ± SD age was of 41.25±13.77 (range 29-58) years. Three short bowel syndrome patients after multiple intestinal resections and one with chronic intestinal pseudo-obstruction were indicated for intestinal transplantation. Sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy of V, E, N, C, and H scores for predicting rejection were 97.4%, 45.9%, 65.7%; 94.7%, 70.5%, 79.8%; 97.4%, 52.5%, 69.7%; 94.7%, 54.1%, 69.7%; and 97.4%, 62.3%, 75.8%, respectively. Pearson's correlation coefficients between total and individual V, E, N, C, H scores and histological rejection were 0.79, 0.64, 0.70, 0.71, 0.73, and 0.66, respectively (P < .001). To predict mild and moderate/severe rejection, total scores more than 4 and 6 had the sensitivity/specificity of 87.50%/57.38% and 96.67%/85.25%, respectively (area under the ROC 0.791 and 0.987).

Endoscopic VENCH scoring is promising for predicting rejection after IT. More studies are warranted to validate such results. (ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT03616548.).