Impact of different ischemia times on biliary stricture after living donor liver transplantation with biliary atresia

Biliary atresia (BA) is the most common indication for pediatric liver transplantation, and biliary stricture (BS) remains an Achilles' heel for pediatric living donor liver transplantation (LDLT). We investigated the impact of different ischemia times on BS after LDLT in patients with BA. We retrospectively analyzed patients (<18 y) with BA who underwent LDLT between January 2016 and December 2020. Cases with hepatic artery thrombosis, bile leakage, early BS (<2 wk), and early death (<3 mo) were excluded. In all, 572 cases were included. A total of 26 cases (4.55%, 26/572) developed BS: 25 patients with anastomotic stricture and 1 patient with anastomotic stricture combined with left hepatic duct stricture. In addition, the time to diagnosis of BS ranged from 1.8 to 53.0 months (mean, 13.0 mo and median, 8.2 mo) after transplantation. A multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that arterial ischemia time (AIT), per 10 minutes (OR=1.222, 95% CI: 1.007-1.438, p =0.04) was the only independent risk factor for the development of BS after LDLT in patients with BA. What is more, the 5-year cumulative risk of BS between the AIT ≥40 minutes and AIT <40 minutes groups was 2.79% versus 10.57%. AIT was the only independent risk factor for the development of BS after LDLT with BA, and AIT ≥40 minutes would increase the 5-year cumulative risk of BS in our study. A shorter AIT, especially AIT <40 minutes, should be kept to decrease BS.