Michael R. Lucey, MD, FAASLD, will present Tuesday morning’s AASLD State-of-the-Art Lecture Liver Transplantation for Extended Criteria Recipients. The term ‘extended criteria’ is borrowed from the donor literature and doesn’t have a specific definition, he said.

“The extended criteria recipient refers to a person who in previous times would not have been considered a liver transplant candidate, whereas today we might consider them suitable in some circumstances,” said Dr. Lucey, professor of gastroenterology and hepatology at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, Madison.

The AASLD guidelines for Liver Transplantation Evaluation of the Adult Patient, published in 2013, will provide a template for Dr. Lucey’s lecture. The guidelines leave room for individual centers and practitioners to express their views on how certain patients should be managed, and whether or not they should be considered for liver transplantation.

Dr. Lucey will focus on three clinical conditions during his lecture: alcoholic liver disease (ALD), age and its companion frailty, and cancer. Each provides insights into how the profile of the suitable liver transplant candidate is in constant evolution, he said.

“This is a moving target, and today’s extended criteria recipient is yesterday’s patient who was refused a transplant,” Dr. Lucey said. “I think the field is going to continue to change, and it will change with the advent of new information about successful outcomes in circumstances that were previously thought to be unfavorable. And perhaps this process of change will remove some of the biases that can get in the way of good patient care at the moment.”

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