M. Susan Mandell, Elizabeth A. Pomfret, Randall Steadman, Ryutaro Hirose, David J. Reich, Roman Schumann, Ann Walia – 27 February 2013 – A new Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network/United Network for Organ Sharing bylaw recommends that all centers appoint a director of liver transplant anesthesia with a uniform set of criteria. We obtained survey data from the Liver Transplant Anesthesia Consortium so that we could compare existing criteria for a director in the United States with the current recommendations.

Peixiang Lan, Cai Zhang, Qiuju Han, Jian Zhang, Zhigang Tian – 27 February 2013 – Hepatitis B virus (HBV) persistence aggravates hepatic immunotolerance, leading to the failure of cell‐intrinsic type I interferon and antiviral response, but whether and how HBV‐induced hepatocyte‐intrinsic tolerance influences systemic adaptive immunity has never been reported, which is becoming the major obstacle for chronic HBV therapy.

Stuart Falconer, James J. Powell, Gabriel C. Oniscu – 27 February 2013

Edward J. Gane, Scott Patterson, Simone I. Strasser, Geoffrey W. McCaughan, Peter W. Angus – 27 February 2013 – Without effective prophylaxis, liver transplantation for hepatitis B virus (HBV)–related liver disease is frequently complicated by severe and rapidly progressive HBV recurrence. Combination prophylaxis with hepatitis B immune globulin (HBIG) and lamivudine (LAM) reduces long‐term recurrence rates below 10%; however, HBIG is costly and inconvenient to administer.

Gabriella Cordone, Fabiana Zingone, Giuseppe Cardillo, Vincenzo Martinelli, Novella Pugliese, Lucienne Pellegrini, Carolina Ciacci, Gianpaolo Parrilli – 27 February 2013 – The prevalence and causes of erythrocytosis after liver transplantation have never been studied, even though this condition is known to predispose patients to thrombosis leading to graft failure or death. Erythrocytosis after orthotopic liver transplantation (OLT) can be defined as an increase in the red cell mass >125% in patients without a pre‐OLT history of this condition.

Rodrigo Vincenzi, Joao Seda‐Neto, Eduardo Antunes da Fonseca, Bernardo Mazzini Ketzer, Marcel Benavides, Helry Lopes Cândido, Gilda Porta, Irene Kazue Miura, Renata Pugliese, Vera Baggio Danesi, Teresa Cristina Guimaraes, Adriana Porta, Cristian Barbieri Borges, Mario Kondo, Paulo Chapchap – 27 February 2013 – The vascular anomalies encountered in patients with biliary atresia associated with polysplenia syndrome and situs inversus (SI) demand technical refinements when liver transplantation is being performed.

Lewis W. Teperman, Fred Poordad, Natalie Bzowej, Paul Martin, Surakit Pungpapong, Thomas Schiano, John Flaherty, Phillip Dinh, Stephen Rossi, G. Mani Subramanian, James Spivey – 27 February 2013 – Long‐term prophylaxis with hepatitis B immunoglobulin (HBIG) for the prevention of hepatitis B virus (HBV) recurrence after orthotopic liver transplantation (OLT) in patients with chronic HBV infection is inconvenient and costly.

Humberto E. Bohorquez, Daniel Gomez, Ari J. Cohen, David S. Bruce, Ian C. Carmody, Trevor W. Reichman, George E. Loss – 27 February 2013

Jennifer C. Lai, Sandy Feng, Eric Vittinghoff, John P. Roberts – 27 February 2013 – We previously reported that national liver distribution is highly concentrated in 6 US centers, and this raises the possibility of expedited placement. Therefore, we evaluated all national offers of nationally placed livers (n=1625) to adult wait‐list candidates from February 2005 to January 2010. We developed a model to predict national utilization pathways; pathways exceeding the best‐fit linear unbiased predictions by ≥3 standard errors were defined as preferred.

Sommer E. Gentry, Dorry L. Segev – 27 February 2013