Racial and ethnic disparities in post–liver transplant survival among patients with hepatocellular carcinoma in the United States.

Abstract

178 Background: Liver transplantation (LT) is a potentially curative treatment option for some patients with early-stage hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Racial and ethnic disparities in diagnosis and overall outcomes for HCC are well known. However, real-world data on disparities in post-LT survival among patients with HCC are lacking. Methods: We used TriNetX, a national database comprising approximately 74 million patients across 54 health care organizations in the United States, to retrospectively identify patients who had an ICD-10 diagnosis of HCC (ICD-10 C22.0, C22.8) and underwent LT (CPT codes 47135, 47140, 47140, 47141, 47142) from 2012-2022. We retrieved data on baseline characteristics and compared them across racial and ethnic subgroups; Caucasians, African Americans (AA) and other minorities (Hispanics/Asians). We studied post-LT outcomes using survival at 1 year, 3 years and 5 years. Results: A total of 2,901 patients with HCC underwent LT over the study period, out of which, majority were Caucasians (2403/2901, 84.8%), followed by AA (267/2901, 9.2%) Hispanic/Asian (231/2901, 7.9%). At baseline, AA patients had higher prevalence of viral hepatitis B (10.1% vs 5.7%, p=0.004), hepatitis C (72.7% vs 47.1%, p<0.001) and lower prevalence of alcoholic liver disease (36.3% vs 45.5%, p=0.004) as compared to Caucasian patients. Hispanic/Asian patients had lower prevalence of alcoholic liver disease (37.7% vs 45.5%, p=0.02), nicotine dependence (13.4% vs 21.3%, p=0.004) and higher prevalence of viral hepatitis B (24.7% vs 5.7%, p<0.001) as compared to Caucasian patients. We found no differences post-LT survival at 1 year (92.9% vs 91.6%, p=0.60), 3 years (77.6% vs 80.5%, p=0.48) and 5 years (71.0% vs 72.3%, p=0.46) between AA and Caucasian patients. While post-LT survival at 1 year was lower among Hispanic/Asian patients (88.5% vs 94.3%, p=0.04), we found no difference in post-LT survival at 3 years (82.5% vs 85.4%, p=0.27) and 5 years (75.8% vs 75.7%, p=0.55) when compared to Caucasians. Conclusions: We present real-world data demonstrating the under-representation of racial minorities in the cohort of patients with HCC receiving LT in the US. We found no differences in post-LT survival (except higher early mortality among Hispanic/Asian patients), across racial/ethnic groups. These results show that stringent implementation of policies aimed at ensuring equitable access to LT may contribute to bridging disparities in overall outcomes in HCC.