The shortage of organ donors for low-weight liver transplant recipients, especially small children, has led to the development of new surgical techniques to increase the donor pool. Almost all of these techniques use the left lateral segment (Couinaud's segments II and III), but even this graft could be too large for children under 10 kg, and further reduction could be necessary. Few articles address the issue of monosegmental liver transplantation. Available articles are with small sample sizes or even case reports, which makes it difficult to draw conclusions about indication and outcome for monosegmental grafts. A search of the MEDLINE databases using the terms "Liver Transplantation" and "Monosegmental" or "Monosegments" limited to title or abstract with publication in the English language was conducted. The data from each study were selected and analyzed, regarding donor status (living or cadaveric), donor weight, surgical techniques used in left lateral further reduction, recipient indication for liver transplantation, age and recipient weight, graft-to-recipient body weight ratio, segment uti-
The development of alloantibodies that inhibit or neutralise the function of factor VIII is considered the most serious complication of the treatment of congenital haemophilia A. In order to describe their course without immune tolerance induction (ITI), we documented data on all performed inhibitor tests with dates as well as on clotting factor infusions of all consecutive patients who were treated in our centre between 1993 and 2006. Patients were tested every 7.1 months (95% confidence interval [CI], 6.6-7.8). A 'sustained negative inhibitor status' was defined as consistent non-positive inhibitor measurements for two years or longer. A total of 60/486 (12%) patients tested had a positive inhibitor titre in two or more occasions. Most of the patients (56%) with a maximum inhibitor titre of < 5 Bethesda unit (BU)/ml (named "low titre inhibitor") developed a sustained negative inhibitor status. Among patients with high (5-9.9 BU/ml) and very high (≥ 10 BU/ml) inhibitor titres, the proportions were 50% and 3%, respectively. Our findings suggest that ITI might not be needed for all patients with non-transient inhibitors, especially when their maximum inhibitor titre is below 10 BU/ml. Further studies in countries where ITI is not available are needed to examine predictors of the natural sustained negative inhibitor status.
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