8% of the patients with PSC had a pre-LT SF levels ≥365 μg/L. Parameters reflecting more advanced liver disease such as MELD score, serum sodium, and SALT score, which correlate with outcome after LT, and the parameters used to calculate these scores were significantly

higher in the high-SF group. In accordance with this, the mean waiting time from first transplant evaluation and measurement of SF and TFS, until the day of LT was significantly shorter in the high-SF group (290 versus 432 days, P < 0.001). However, neither cold ischemia time nor the percentage of split-organ LTs differed between both groups. Patients with Selleck KU-60019 a SF ≥365 μg/L had a significantly reduced 3-year, 5-year, and overall survival (Fig. 1A). In these patients, longer postoperative ICU times were observed (Table 2). However, overall long-term graft survival did not differ between both groups. When analyzed as a continuous variable, surviving patients had a significantly lower SF prior to LT (264.7 ± 377.1 μg/L versus 363.6 ± 551 μg/L, P = 0.014), although there was no significant difference regarding serum iron concentration see more (22 μmol/L versus 23.3 μmol/L) or TFS (48% versus 49.5%). The surviving patients also had a lower pretransplant MELD score (14.4 ± 6.5 versus 16.8 ± 8.6, P = 0.025) and a lower pretransplant SALT score (0.81 ± 0.98 versus 1.34 ± 0.93, P < 0.001). In addition, a Kaplan–Meier

analysis of patients who underwent LT, excluding those with HCC (n = 272), showed similar results, and also a significantly reduced overall survival of patients with a SF ≥365 μg/L (62.0% versus 78.6%, P = 0.002; data not shown). Pretransplant SF ≥365 μg/L showed a specificity of 76.3% and a negative predictive value (NPV) of 74.4%, but only a low sensitivity of 36.5% and a positive predictive value (PPV) of 38.9% for death after LT in the long-term follow-up, resulting in an accuracy of 64.6%. The accuracy of SF ≥365 μg/L as a predictive parameter for outcome was even lower in patients who underwent

transplantation because of alcoholic cirrhosis, HCC, or hepatitis C (Table 3). In contrast, for patients with cholestatic liver diseases (PSC in particular), specificity and NPV were greater than 85%, resulting in a good accuracy, although sensitivity was low. In view of the difference in waiting oxyclozanide time between the low-SF and high-SF groups, we analyzed whether this impacted the observed results. Pre-LT waiting time was significantly longer in survivors (423 versus 321 days, P = 0.014). However, when both waiting time and SF ≥365 μg/L where entered into a logistic regression model, SF ≥365 μg/L remained as the only independent parameter. To exclude an influence of elevated SF levels that rose immediately prior LT due to acute-phase reactions, an additional analysis excluding those 45 cases with an SF measurement obtained less than 60 days before LT was undertaken.