Navigating MELD Criteria Challenges for Liver Transplant Referral скачать в хорошем качестве

Navigating MELD Criteria Challenges for Liver Transplant Referral

With more than 100,000 people currently on the national organ transplant waitlist and liver transplants being one of the most sought-after organ transplants, the Model for End-Stage Liver Disease (MELD) formula is used to assign priority to most liver transplant candidates ≥ 12 years of age based on their medical urgency to determine deceased donor liver allocation. However, many patients’ MELD scores do not accurately reflect how sick they truly are, posing a challenge to many healthcare providers. “What I have seen is that in a lot of patients, their symptoms don't really go along with their MELD score. The MELD is 18 or 19, but their symptoms are so profound that they're so fatigued and they're so malnutritioned, they're like skin and bone,” Sherona Bau, NP, a hepatology nurse practitioner at the UCLA Pfleger Liver Institute, explained to HCPLive. “In those patients, it's very challenging because if you look at just giving them a transplant according to the MELD score, they are probably never going to get the liver transplant.” She went on to review potential alternatives for patients whose MELD scores likely will not make them a viable candidate for liver transplantation, including relocation to a new region with different MELD criteria, finding a living donor, or undergoing a TIPS procedure. “Give them some kind of realistic expectation. Then they know ‘Oh, it's not going to be just like today. We submit the evaluation, I’m going to be listed next month.’ Probably not, it takes a few months for the patient to be listed,” Bau said. https://www.hcplive.com/view/sherona-... #hepatology #liver #transplant #MELD