Faculty Bibliography

According to the United States census bureau 20% of Americans will be older than 65 years in 2030 and half of them will need an operation - equating to about 36 million older surgical patients. Older adults are prone to complications during gastrointestinal cancer treatment and therefore may need to undergo special pretreatment assessments that incorporate frailty and sarcopenia assessments. A focused, structured literature review on PubMed and Google Scholar was performed to identify primary research articles, review articles, as well as practice guidelines on frailty and sarcopenia among patients undergoing gastrointestinal surgery. The initial search identified 450 articles; after eliminating duplicates, reports that did not include surgical patients, case series, as well as case reports, 42 publications on the impact of frailty and/or sarcopenia on outcome of patients undergoing gastrointestinal surgery were included. Frailty is defined as a clinically recognizable state of increased vulnerability to physiologic stressors resulting from aging. Frailty is associated with a decline in physiologic reserve and function across multiple physiologic systems. Sarcopenia is a syndrome characterized by progressive and generalized loss of skeletal muscle mass and strength. Unlike cachexia, which is typically associated with weight loss due to chemotherapy or a general malignancy-related cachexia syndrome, sarcopenia relates to muscle mass rather than simply weight. As such, while weight reflects nutritional status, sarcopenia - the loss of muscle mass - is a more accurate and quantitative global marker of frailty. While chronologic age is an important element in assessing a patient's peri-operative risk, physiologic age is a more important determinant of outcomes. Geriatric assessment tools are important components of the pre-operative work-up and can help identify patients who suffer from frailty. Such data are important, as frailty and sarcopenia have repeatedly been demonstrated among the strongest predictors of both short- and long-term outcome following complicated surgical procedures such as esophageal, gastric, colorectal, and hepato-pancreatico-biliary resections.

BACKGROUND:Early outcomes after human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) + liver transplantation (LT) are encouraging, but data are lacking regarding long-term outcomes and comparisons with matched HIV- patients. METHODS:We examined outcomes among 180 HIV+ LT, and compared outcomes to matched HIV- counterfactuals (Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients 2002-2011). Iterative expanding radius matching (1:10) on recipient age, race, body mass index, hepatitis C virus (HCV), model for end-stage liver disease score, and acute rejection; and donor age and race, cold ischemia time, and year of transplant. Patient survival and graft survival were estimated using Kaplan-Meier methodology and compared using log-rank and Cox proportional hazards. Subgroup analyses were performed by transplant era (early: 2002-2007 vs. modern: 2008-2011) and HCV infection status. RESULTS:Compared to matched HIV- controls, HIV+ LT recipients had a 1.68-fold increased risk for death (adjusted hazard ratio [aHR], 1.68, 95% confidence interval [95% CI], 1.28-2.20; P < 0.001), and a 1.70-fold increased risk for graft loss (aHR, 1.70; 95% CI, 1.31-2.20; P < 0.001). These differences persisted independent of HCV infection status. However, in the modern transplant era risk for death (aHR, 1.11; 95% CI, 0.52-2.35; P = 0.79) and graft loss (aHR, 0.89; 95% CI, 0.42-1.88; P = 0.77) were similar between monoinfected and uninfected LT recipients. In contrast, independent of transplant era, coinfected LT recipients had increased risk for death (aHR, 2.24; 95% CI, 1.43-3.53; P < 0.001) and graft loss (aHR, 2.07; 95% CI, 1.33-3.22; P = 0.001) compared to HCV+ alone LT recipients. CONCLUSIONS:These results suggest that outcomes among monoinfected HIV+ LT recipients have improved over time. However, outcomes among HIV+ LT recipients coinfected with HCV remain concerning and motivate future survival benefit studies.