BRISTOL, England, Sept. 27 (UPI) -- Women who receive liver transplants in the United Kingdom live 4.5 years longer than male recipients, the U.K. Transplant Liver Advisory says.
The agency said the average survival time for six-month liver-transplant recipients was 22 years; the averages for male and female recipients were 18 and 26 years, respectively.
Since those figures for men and women in the general population were 27 and 31 years, respectively, the Advisory said that male liver-transplant recipients in the United Kingdom lost twice as many years of life as their female counterparts.
Liver-transplant recipients between 17 and 34 years had the longest survival time of 28 years, but their healthy peers could look forward to 51 more years of life.
The agency also found that transplant recipients with primary liver disease lived significantly longer than those who underwent the procedure because their liver was destroyed by hepatitis C infections, cirrhosis or cancer.
The findings were based on a review of liver-transplant statistics from the National Transplant Database between 1985 and 2003, and compared life-expectancy information on 2,702 liver-transplant recipients.
The findings appear in the most recent online version of the journal Gut.
