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©The Author(s) 2017. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Hepatol. Apr 28, 2017; 9(12): 595-602
Published online Apr 28, 2017. doi: 10.4254/wjh.v9.i12.595
Published online Apr 28, 2017. doi: 10.4254/wjh.v9.i12.595
Diagnosis of morbid obesity may not impact healthcare utilization for orthotopic liver transplantation: A propensity matched study
Joshua R Peck, Anthony Michaels, Adam J Hanje, Khalid Mumtaz, Division of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition, the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, Columbus, OH 43120, United States
Nicholas Latchana, Elmahdi A Elkhammas, Sylvester M Black, Department of Surgery, the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, Columbus, OH 43120, United States
Alice Hinton, Department of Biostatistics, the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, Columbus, OH 43120, United States
Author contributions: Peck JR and Mumtaz K, designed the study; Peck JR, Mumtaz K, Latchana N and Hinton A collected and analyzed the data; Peck JR, Latchana N, Michaels A, Hanje AJ, Hinton A, Elkhammas E, Black SM and Mumtaz K all equally contributed to writing the paper.
Institutional review board statement: This study was IRB exempt.
Informed consent statement: Consent was not obtained but the presented data are anonymized and the risk of identification is low.
Conflict-of-interest statement: None of the authors have any conflicts of interest to disclose.
Data sharing statement: Technical appendix, statistical code, and dataset available from the corresponding author at khalid.mumtaz@osumc.edu.
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: Khalid Mumtaz, MD, MSc, Assistant Professor, Division of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition, the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, 395 W 12th Ave, 2nd Floor, Columbus, OH 43210, United States. khalid.mumtaz@osumc.edu
Telephone: +1-614-2938000 Fax: +1-614-2930861
Received: December 4, 2016
Peer-review started: December 5, 2016
First decision: January 21, 2017
Revised: February 15, 2017
Accepted: March 21, 2017
Article in press: March 22, 2017
Published online: April 28, 2017
Peer-review started: December 5, 2016
First decision: January 21, 2017
Revised: February 15, 2017
Accepted: March 21, 2017
Article in press: March 22, 2017
Published online: April 28, 2017
Core Tip
Core tip: Morbid obesity is a relative contraindication to orthotopic liver transplantation. Previous studies, mostly in the pre-MELD era, suggested worsened outcomes in these patients. As the prevalence of obesity continues to increase, so will the number of patients who are morbidly obese requiring liver transplantation. Utilizing the Nationwide Inpatient Sample which is the largest publicly available database in the United States, we did not find any difference in mortality, or healthcare utilization when comparing those with and without morbid obesity receiving liver transplantation. Our findings suggest that in highly selected patients, morbid obesity may not be a significant contraindication to transplantation.