Blood Salvage in Orthotopic Liver Transplantation With HCC

Blood loss during liver transplantation (LT) often necessitates transfusion. However, allogeneic blood transfusion (blood from a donor) has risks. For this reason, intraoperative blood cell salvage and autotransfusion (IBSA) is frequently deployed to reduce the need for allogeneic blood transfusion. While IBSA is often used in LT, it is rarely used in patients undergoing LT for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) due to the theoretical risk of re-infusing cancer cells.

This single-centre, randomized, pilot study, will investigate the feasibility, safety, and efficacy of IBSA in patients undergoing LT for HCC.

Patients with HCC, listed for a Liver Transplant at the study institution, will be consented in clinic. At the time of liver transplant surgery, patients will be randomized, provided that enough blood is collected to generate a minimum of 1 unit of washed RBCs to give back. Participants randomized to arm 1 will receive their autologous blood via transfusion. Participants randomized to arm 2 will not receive their autologous blood - instead the blood will be discarded. Following surgery, participants will be followed for evaluation of safety and efficacy outcomes related to overall transfusions requirements and cancer recurrence.

The primary outcome is an evaluation of how many patients who consent to the trial will experience enough blood loss during surgery to be randomizable according to the study design (producing a minimum of 1 unit of washed RBCs).

Secondary outcomes include: whether the study can meet its accrual and enrollment goals within the study period; a comparison of rates of patient survival and HCC recurrence between the study groups; a comparison of the patient characteristics of those randomized to those not randomized. Blood will also be collected for correlative studies.

Depending on the outcomes of this feasibility trial, a subsequent larger full-scale multi-institutional trial will be planned, which will be more appropriately powered to evaluate the true impact of IBSA on the use of allogeneic blood products and post-transplant HCC-specific outcomes.

Inclusion criteria

• Listed for a liver transplant
• diagnosis of Hepatocellular carcinoma

Exclusion criteria

• - Patients with malignancy other than HCC, such as mixed cholangiocarcinoma-hepatocellular carcinoma, cholangiocarcinoma, and metastatic colorectal cancer. Patients who had a preoperative diagnosis of HCC but a postoperative diagnosis of any of the above will be analyzed separately.
• Pediatric patients (age<18 years at the time of screening)
• Patients undergoing re-transplantation
• Multi-organ transplantation