Challenges in Abdominal Organ Transplantation During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Screening, Surveillance, and Management of Hepatocellular Carcinoma During the COVID-19 Pandemic: a Narrative Review

PURPOSE

The COVID-19 pandemic has been a burden to the global community as a whole but the healthcare community had bore the brunt of it. The pandemic resulted in policy changes that interfered with effective healthcare delivery. The healthcare community attempted to cope with the pandemic by triaging and prioritizing emergency conditions especially COVID related, ahead of elective conditions like cancer care. There was also fear that patients with cancer were at an increased risk of sever COVID-19 with increased mortality. Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) was also affected by these policies.

METHODS

We reviewed the modified measures adopted in screening, surveillance, and management of HCC during the pandemic using PubMed, Medline, Index Medicus, EMBASE, SCOPUS, and Google Scholar databases.

RESULT

The main modification in surveillance and screening for HCC during the pandemic includes limiting the surveillance to those with very high risk of HCC. The interval between surveillan was also delayed by few months in some cases. The adoption of teleconferencing for multidisciplinary team meetings and patient consultation is one of the highlights of this pandemic all in an effort to reduce contact and spread of the virus. The treatment of early-stage HCC was also modified as needed. The role of ablative therapy in the management of early HCC was very prominent during the pandemic as the surgical therapy was significantly affected by the lacks of ventilators and intensive care unit space resulting from the pandemic. Transplantation, especially living donor liver transplantation, was suspended in few centers because of the risk of infection to the living donors.

CONCLUSION

As we gradually recover from the pandemic, we should prepare for the fallout from the pandemic as we may encounter increased presentation of those patients deferred from screening during the pandemic.

Liver transplantation during COVID-19: Adaptive measures with future significance

Following the outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), a disease caused by the novel severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the field of liver transplantation, along with many other aspects of healthcare, underwent drastic changes. Despite an initial increase in waitlist mortality and a decrease in both living and deceased donor liver transplantation rates, through the implementation of a series of new measures, the transplant community was able to recover by the summer of 2020. Changes in waitlist prioritization, the gradual implementation of telehealth, and immunosuppressive regimen alterations amidst concerns regarding more severe disease in immunocompromised patients, were among the changes implemented in an attempt by the transplant community to adapt to the pandemic. More recently, with the advent of the Pfizer BNT162b2 vaccine, a powerful new preventative tool against infection, the pandemic is slowly beginning to subside. The pandemic has certainly brought transplant centers around the world to their limits. Despite the unspeakable tragedy, COVID-19 constitutes a valuable lesson for health systems to be more prepared for potential future health crises and for life-saving transplantation not to fall behind.

SARS-CoV-2 viral load assessment in lung transplantation

In the era of COVID-19 pandemic, organ transplantation programs were facing serious challenges. The lung transplantation donor pool was extremely limited and SARS-CoV-2 viral load assessment has become a crucial part of selecting an optimal organ donor. Since COVID-19 is a respiratory disease, the viral load is thought to be more important in lung transplantations as compared to other solid organ transplantations. We present two challenging cases of potential lung donors with a questionable COVID-19 status. Based on these cases, we suggest that the cycle threshold (Ct) value should always be requested from the laboratory and the decision whether to proceed with transplantation should be made upon complex evaluation of diverse criteria, including the nasopharyngeal swab and bronchoalveolar lavage PCR results, the Ct value, imaging findings and the medical history. However, as the presence of viral RNA does not ensure infectivity, it is still to be clarified which Ct values are associated with the viral viability. Anti-SARS-CoV-2 IgA antibodies may support the diagnosis and moreover, novel methods, such as quantifying SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid antigen in serum may provide important answers in organ transplantations and donor selections.

The COVID-19 pandemic and organ donation and transplantation: ethical issues

Background

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on the health system worldwide. The organ and tissue donation and transplantation (OTDT) system is no exception and has had to face ethical challenges related to the pandemic, such as risks of infection and resource allocation. In this setting, many Canadian transplant programs halted their activities during the first wave of the pandemic.

Method

To inform future ethical guidelines related to the COVID-19 pandemic or other public health emergencies of international concern, we conducted a literature review to summarize the ethical issues.

Results

This literature review identified three categories of ethical challenges. The first one describes the general ethical issues and challenges reported by OTDT organizations and transplantation programs, such as risks of COVID-19 transmission and infection to transplant recipients and healthcare professionals during the transplant process, risk of patient waitlist mortality or further resource strain where transplant procedures have been delayed or halted, and resource allocation. The second category describes ethical challenges related to informed consent in the context of uncertainty and virtual consent. Finally, the third category describes ethical issues related to organ allocation, such as social considerations in selecting transplant candidates.

Conclusion

This literature review highlights the salient ethical issues related to OTDT during the current COVID-19 pandemic. As medical and scientific knowledge about COVID-19 increases, the uncertainties related to this disease will decrease and the associated ethical issues will continue to evolve.

Challenges of Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation in the Era of COVID-19

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic raised unprecedented concerns in the hematopoietic stem cell transplant community. The diagnosis of COVID-19 in these transplant recipients may require extensive laboratory testing and high clinical suspicion, as atypical clinical manifestations or other respiratory viral infections are common in this patient population. The underlying malignancies, immunosuppressed state, frequently observed coinfections, and advanced age in some patients may also predispose them to worse clinical outcomes. Similar outcomes have been previously described with other human coronaviruses, including the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus and the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus. Many hematopoietic stem cell transplant organizations have issued elaborative guidelines that aim to prevent transmission and hence adverse patient outcomes. All potential donors are thoroughly screened, and donated products are cryopreserved in advance. Potential hematopoietic stem cell transplant recipients are also screened, and most nonurgent transplant cases with low risk of progression and/or death are deferred. Current hematopoietic stem cell transplant recipients should adhere to precaution and isolation measures, while their transplant units should also follow strict safety protocols, similar to other infectious outbreaks. The prolonged susceptibility of hematopoietic stem cell transplant recipients to respiratory viral infections might necessitate extending these measures even after the peak of the outbreak until a gradually return to normality is possible.

A Systematic Review of COVID-19 Infection in Kidney Transplant Recipients: A Universal Effort to Preserve Patients' Lives and Allografts

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has posed a significant challenge to physicians and healthcare systems worldwide. Evidence about kidney transplant (KTx) recipients is still limited. A systematic literature review was performed. We included 63 articles published from 1 January until 7 July 2020, reporting on 420 adult KTx recipients with confirmed COVID-19. The mean age of patients was 55 ± 15 years. There was a male predominance (67%). The majority (74%) were deceased donor recipients, and 23% were recently transplanted (<1 year). Most patients (88%) had at least one comorbidity, 29% had two, and 18% three. Ninety-three percent of cases were hospitalized. Among them, 30% were admitted to the intensive care unit, 45% developed acute respiratory distress syndrome, and 44% had acute kidney injury with 23% needing renal replacement therapy. From the hospitalized patients a total of 22% died, 59% were discharged, and 19% were still in hospital at the time of publication. Immunosuppression was reduced in 27%, discontinued in 31%, and remained unchanged in 5%. Hydroxychloroquine was administered to 78% of patients, antibiotics to 73%, and antivirals to 30% while 25% received corticosteroid boluses, 28% received anti-interleukin agents, and 8% were given immunoglobulin. The main finding of our analysis was that the incidence of COVID-19 among kidney transplant patients is not particularly high, but when they do get infected, this is related to significant morbidity and mortality.

Kidney transplant recipients infected by COVID-19: Review of the initial published experience

There is an accumulating body of literature surrounding the impact of COVID‐19 infection in solid organ transplant recipients. The aim of this review was to summarize the existing literature specifically in kidney transplant (KTx) recipients, with an emphasis on the epidemiology, clinical presentation, laboratory findings, post‐operative outcomes, and therapeutic strategies currently employed. We identified thirty‐seven studies published between January 1, 2020, and June 10, 2020, that were included in our analysis. As is reported in the general population, there is a wide variation in COVID‐19 presentation among KTx patients, ranging from asymptomatic to life‐threatening end‐organ failure. The most common symptoms are predominantly respiratory and associated with fever. On laboratory evaluation, many patients present with lymphopenia and increased CRP, which are both associated with inferior outcomes. The majority of patients with severe symptoms have been managed with reduction of immunosuppression, including decreased doses of CNIs and withdrawal of MMF. Lastly, although there are no high‐level data supporting the use of immunomodulatory drugs, such as IL‐6 inhibitors, early experiences have suggested these drugs may improve outcomes in KTx patients with severe COVID‐19.