Nearly half of children in need of a liver transplant die or are removed from a wait list without an offer of an organ, according to retrospective study that looked at the US liver transplant wait list from 2007 to 2014.

• Statistics indicate that about 1 out of every 10 children on the transplant list wait list die each year.
• Among children who died or who were delisted, 45% expired or were taken off the list without any offer of an organ.
• The current analysis found that among more than 3,800 pediatric candidates, those who died or were taken off the list received 1 pediatric liver offer on average and waited a median of 33 days before being removed from the wait list.
• Among children who died or were delisted, 55% had received an offer of ≥1 livers that was eventually transplanted into another child.
• Researchers called for a re-examination of the liver allocation process after pointing out that the current selection algorithm prioritizes adults based on regional status and leads to more than 1,500 pediatric livers being given to adults before children throughout the nation.