Hepatic lidocaine metabolism and complications of cirrhosis : implications for assessing patient priority for hepatic transplantation

The number of patients awaiting hepatic transplantation continues to exceed organ donation. As a result, many liver transplant candidates will develop lifethreatening complications of their liver disease and not survive the pretransplant waiting period. Recent studies have demonstrated that hepatic lidocaine metabolism into monoethylglycinexylidide (MEG-X) can predict pretransplant survival. The present study was performed to determine if MEG-X could also predict pretransplant complications and thereby be useful in stratifying persons being evaluated for hepatic transplantation. A total of 57 patients with biopsy-proven cirrhosis underwent MEG-X testing