![]() | Only 14 pages are availabe for public view |
Abstract Liver transplantation (LT) is the only radical treatment for end-stage liver disease. Due to increased safety and logistic facilities, the number of transplanted patients is continuously increasing. The increased frequency of this procedure justifies a great effort to reduce post-transplant complications, since these may have major impact on both survival and quality of life. Of all the complications of liver transplantation, the neurological ones are particularly relevant, since they affect about 13-47% of transplanted patients, causing significant mortality and morbidity. Neurological complications (NCs) following liver transplantation are due to: metabolic complications, profound cerebral and systemic hemodynamic alterations, brain hypoperfusion, cerebral hemorrhage, anterior spinal artery syndrome, central nervous system (CNS) infections, CNS neoplasms and Immunosuppressant neurotoxicity. Neurological complications can be classified according to the severity and the time of occurrence into: minor versus major complications, surgery related complications versus post-surgical complications. The latter can be distinguished as: early (within 1 month after surgery) and late complications. Minor complications include: tremors, headache, sleep disorders and peripheral neuropathy, while major complications include: encephalopathy, seizures, cerebrovascular complications, cerebellar syndrome, posterior reversible encephalopathy (PRES) syndrome, central pontine myelinolysis (CPM) syndrome, focal neurological deficits and akinetic mutism. Late post |