Outcomes of Severe Pregnancy-Related Liver Disease: Refining the Role of Transplantation

Severe liver disease in pregnancy is generally considered to have a favorable prognosis. The limited data available have not yielded disease-specific prognostic criteria or guidance on who should undergo liver transplantation (LT). We retrospectively evaluated 54 admissions with pregnancy-related liver disease to (1) evaluate if any admission parameters were associated with death and/or transplantation and (2) identify maternal complications. Eighteen had acute fatty liver of pregnancy and 32 had hypertension/eclampsia related disease. Seven patients (13%) died and four (7%) underwent LT. Survival rates were 43/48 if not listed for LT and 4/6 if listed. Of the four transplanted, three survived. Patients who died and/or underwent LT were more likely to have encephalopathy (p = 0.04) and hyperlactaemia (p = 0.03). Serum lactate was the best discriminant (ROC AUC 0.84). An admission lactate greater than 2.8mg/dL had 73% sensitivity and 75% specificity for predicting death or LT. The addition of encephalopathy to this parameter increased sensitivity and specificity to 90% and 86%, respectively. The King's College criteria were not effective in predicting outcome. This study confirms the overall favorable prognosis in pregnancy-related liver failure but indicates that elevated lactate levels in the presence of encephalopathy best identify patients at greatest risk of death or LT.