Retrospective Cohort Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2016. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Nov 7, 2016; 22(41): 9154-9161
Published online Nov 7, 2016. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v22.i41.9154
Effect of airplane transport of donor livers on post-liver transplantation survival
Yi Huang, Gerry MacQuillan, Leon A Adams, George Garas, Megan Collins, Albert Nwaba, Linjun Mou, Max K Bulsara, Luc Delriviere, Gary P Jeffrey
Yi Huang, Gerry MacQuillan, Leon A Adams, George Garas, Gary P Jeffrey, School of Medicine and Pharmacology, University of Western Australia, Nedlands, WA 6009, Australia
Gerry MacQuillan, Leon A Adams, George Garas, Megan Collins, Albert Nwaba, Linjun Mou, Luc Delriviere, Gary P Jeffrey, Western Australian Liver Transplantation Service, Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital, Nedlands, WA 6009, Australia
Max K Bulsara, Institute of Health Research, University of Notre Dame, Fremantle, WA 6160, Australia
Author contributions: Huang Y and Jeffrey GP were responsible for study design, data collection and data analysis; Huang Y and Bulsara MK were responsible for statistical analysis of the date; all authors took part in data interpretation, review of the draft report, and content development.
Institutional review board statement: This study was reviewed and approved by the Institutional Review Board of Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital Human Research Ethics Committee.
Conflict-of-interest statement: None of the authors has a conflict of interest.
Informed consent statement: Due to the nature of the study design, no direct contact of participants was required. The informed consent was waived by Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital Human Research Ethics Committee.
Data sharing statement: Additional data are available from the corresponding author at gary.jeffrey@uwa.edu.au.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Gary P Jeffrey, MB, BS, MD, FRACP, FRCP, Professor, School of Medicine and Pharmacology, University of Western Australia, 5th Floor, Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research, 6 Verdun Street, Nedlands, WA 6009, Australia. gary.jeffrey@uwa.edu.au
Telephone: +61-8-93462098 Fax: +61-8-93463098
Received: June 3, 2016
Peer-review started: June 4, 2016
First decision: July 12, 2016
Revised: July 26, 2016
Accepted: August 23, 2016
Article in press: August 23, 2016
Published online: November 7, 2016
Core Tip

Core tip: This study demonstrated a significantly decreased graft and patient survival for patients who received an airplane transported donor liver compared to a local donor liver not requiring airplane transport. The hazard ratio for airplane transported donor livers compared to local donor livers was 1.98 for graft survival and 1.86 for patient survival. The effect of airplane transportation was independent of cold ischemic time.