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2008 Annual Report
The most common malignancy diagnosed in 2007 at INTEGRIS Baptist Medical Center was cancer of the lungs with 260 cases or 21 percent of the cases in the ten most common malignancies.
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| Liver Transplant |
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 | For liver transplants, the most common diagnoses are autoimmune hepatitis and hepatitis C. Other diagnoses for patients referred to the liver transplant unit are acute liver failure from viral causes (viral infections, toxic damage, medication induced, etc.), chronic cirrhosis leading to end stage liver disease from viral hepatitis B and C, primary biliary cirrhosis, primary sclerosing cholangitis, metabolic diseases, liver tumors and, in children, biliary atresia and other inborn errors of metabolism.
Patients referred for transplant are evaluated typically in about two or three days. These tests are designed to assess the patient's need for transplantation and the urgency. They include blood tests, imaging tests, evaluation of the heart and lung function along with psycho/social evaluation followed by an extensive interview. About 80 percent of physician-referred patients have been accepted as candidates for liver transplants, including a number of patients who were turned down elsewhere due to the complexity of their disease, but have been transplanted successfully at our center.
Once the evaluation phase is completed, the patient is immediately presented at the Liver Transplant Recipient review committee, which includes specialists in cardiology, nephrology, ethics, neurology, addictionology, transplant coordination, social work, etc. Once a patient has been accepted as a candidate for transplantation, his or her waiting time can vary widely depending on blood group, the urgency of the medical condition and the unpredictability of the gift of a suitable donor.
The liver transplant operation itself takes an average of eight to 10 hours, but longer or shorter times are not unusual. Liver transplants as quick as five to six hours are not infrequent with current improvement in surgical technique and avoidance of veno-venous bypass. The median length of stay in the hospital for a liver transplant is 15 days, with 25 percent of cases being discharged home as early as six to eight days. This is possible mainly because of a dedicated, transplant intensive care unit with a full-time transplant/critical care specialist who manages the patients 24 hours a day, along with a committed team of transplant trained specialists in every transplant-related field of medicine.
An analysis of the 1997 report published by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services shows that among the 32 centers (of 99 total centers) that exceeded 60 transplants in the report's most recent two-year interval, NZTI ranked fourth in actual one-year survival (90 percent) and sixth in disease-severity-adjusted one-year survival. NZTI's current one-, two-, three- and five-year survivals are 89 percent, 86 percent, 83 percent and 75 percent.
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