Acute Alcoholic Hepatitis and Liver Transplantation

Trenches in Transplant Surgery · Jul 20, 2025 · 18m

Severe acute alcoholic hepatitis (AAH), characterized by high short-term mortality (exceeding 75% at 6 months) in patients failing corticosteroid therapy (Lille score >0.45), represents a paradigm shift in liver transplantation, moving from historical contraindication to a potentially life-saving intervention for highly selected candidates. Landmark studies, notably Mathurin et al. (2011), demonstrated dramatically improved survival (70-85% at 5 years) with early LT compared to medical management alone in rigorously selected steroid-nonresponsive patients experiencing their *first* episode of…