ABSTRACT
Liver transplantation (LTx) is nowadays an established treatment which has revolutionized the care of patients with end-stage chronic liver diseases. Thousands of patients with a life expectancy of a few months to few years have the opportunity to extend their survival with adequate quality of life if they undergo LTx. The development of more effective immunosuppressive regimens, the remarkable improvement of surgical techniques and skills and the progress in the control of post-transplant complications have in fact resulted in excellent long-term survival rates, far better than the expected survival rates of the underlying liver diseases when not transplanted. Importantly, assessment of prognosis can be repeated over time, as the model does not include invasive procedures, such as liver biopsy. The Mayo model, however, does not take into account the progression of the disease, nor the effect of treatment and cannot estimate the risk of bleeding from variceal rupture.
