July 2016

Synopsis: Many patients on the renal transplant waiting list are sensitized to HLA antigens either to pregnancy, blood transfusions, and increasingly, prior transplant; finding compatible organs for these patients can be challenging even if they have willing living donors and they often spend a long time on the waitlist. This was a 22-center retrospective case controlled study over 10 years comparing survival benefit of a strategy of desensitization followed by HLA-incompatible living donor transplant (n=1025) with waiting for a deceased donor transplant. The authors conclude that desensitization and HLA-incompatible living donor transplant was associated with reduced risk of death (reduced by factor of 1.83, P<0.001). Flaws in this study: 1. Deceased donor control groups were poorly matched to the desensitization groups with differences in patient socioeconomic support, immune function, and fitness for transplant; 2. Criteria for a patient being "HLA-incompatible" is highly variable center to center; many patients included would not have been consider incompatible at other centers; 3. Deceased donor waitlist survival data is obsolete with changes in allocation system to increase priority for sensitized patients; 4. Idea of desensitization and HLA-incompatible living donor is also nearly obsolete with non-controversial evidence that compatible living donor is superior and with advances in computer algorithms to facilitate paired or chain exchanges at regional and national level. 

Synopsis:Acute kidney injury is common and previously demonstrated to affect morbidity and mortality; however, the optimal timing and the benefits/harms of CRRT decisions are not well known. The ELAIN trial is a randomized parallel group trial at a single center in Germany comparing early (<8hr from diagnosis of AKI) vs. late (>8hr from diagnosis of AKI) use of CRRT, primarily in critically ill surgical patients meeting extensive inclusion criteria. Results demonstrated a significant mortality benefit (HR 0.66), increased renal recovery (OR 0.55), shorter time on RRT (HR 0.69), and shorter hospital stays (HR 0.34) in the early CRRT cohort. The major limitation of this study is that it is a small single center trial but findings are compelling to initiate a multicenter trial to evaluate these benefits. 

Synopsis: The authors hypothesize that idiopathic acute pancreatitis may often be due to microlithiaisis; despite negative conventional US imaging, laparoscopic cholecystectomy can prevent pancreatitis recurrence. A multicenter RCT of 85 (39 cholecystectomy, 46 control) patients in Finland performed. At median follow-up of 36 (5–58) months, recurrence rate was higher in the control group (14/46 vs. 4/39, P=0.016). During surgery, nearly 60% of gallbladders were found to contain biliary stones or sludge undetected by US. A total of 5 patients needed to be treated (NNT-value) to prevent 1 episode of recurrent pancreatitis. Limitations of this study: 1. MRCP was not available at all participating institutions (utilized in 32% of cases); 2. genetic testing for CF (CFTR) or autoimmune pancreatitis (PRSS1 and SPINK-1) was guided only by family history without exclusion for index cases. 

Synopsis:In an era of increasing molecular and immune-based prognostication in cancer treatment, surgical decision-making guided by such factors has lagged similar paradigms in other oncologic disciplines. Mutant RAS (mRAS) in colorectal liver metastasis (CRLM) are associated with unfavorable tumor biology and worse surgical/cancer outcomes. This was a single-institution study of 663 patients between 2005-2013 stratifying surgical outcomes in CRLM by RAS mutational status. mRAS was associated with nearly twice the risk of margin-positive resections (11.4 vs. 5.4%). Among patients with liver-first recurrence, mRAS had narrower margins at initial resection. Positive margin (HR 3.36) and mRAS (HR 1.63) were independently associated with worse overall survival. Importantly, association between mRAS and +ve margins was independent of the association between mRAS and response to preoperative chemotherapy. The take-home message is that tumor biology should guide operative decision-making in CRLM. Limitations: 1. Single-institution retrospective study; 2. mutational analysis algorithms varied during length of study; 3. Expanding list of RAS mutations signify functionally redundant alterations in the same signaling pathway, so unclear which ones are most important for prognosis-- this study throws all mutations into a single bucket.