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CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 · Indian J Radiol Imaging 2026; 36(02): 210-215
DOI: 10.1055/s-0045-1809625
Original Article

Comparison of the Risk of Early Postoperative Infection and Length of Hospital Stay between Sarcopenic and Nonsarcopenic Adults Undergoing Live Donor Liver Transplantation Using Computed Tomography

Authors

  • Garima Yadav 

    1   Department of Radiology and Imaging, BLK Super Speciality Hospital, New Delhi, India

  • Prem Kumar Ganesan

    1   Department of Radiology and Imaging, BLK Super Speciality Hospital, New Delhi, India

  • Narottam Khadaria

    1   Department of Radiology and Imaging, BLK Super Speciality Hospital, New Delhi, India

  • Abhideep Chaudhary

    2   Department of HPB Surgery and Liver Transplantation, BLK Super Speciality Hospital, New Delhi, India

  • Shashank Raj

    1   Department of Radiology and Imaging, BLK Super Speciality Hospital, New Delhi, India
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Abstract

Objectives

Computed tomography (CT)-based sarcopenia assessment and the risk of early postoperative infection among adults undergoing live donor liver transplantation.

This article also compares the postoperative length of hospital stay in sarcopenic and nonsarcopenic patients after live donor liver transplantation.

Materials and Methods

Sixty live donor liver transplantation recipients undergoing abdominal CT scans were included during the period from April 2022 to February 2024. CT data was obtained via 128-slice Revolution Frontier CT by GE Healthcare. Individual vertebral levels were identified on CT scan and skeletal muscle cross-sectional areas were computed using MATLAB algorithms. SliceOmatic software aided in muscle area determination and L3 vertebra served as the reference for assessing abdominal muscles. Skeletal muscle index was derived by normalizing muscle area to height. Sex-specific sarcopenia cutoffs were applied based on CT findings. Postoperative care included surveillance for infections using blood culture positivity.

Results

Note that 76.47% of the infected patients were sarcopenic while 23.53% were nonsarcopenic. Also, 32.56% of the noninfected patients were sarcopenic whereas 67.44% were nonsarcopenic (p-value = 0.003). Postop length of hospital stay in days showed a significant difference between the two groups (p ≤ 0.001), with the sarcopenic group having the greatest median postop length of hospital stay.

Conclusion

Pretransplant sarcopenia as determined by skeletal muscle index is associated with an increased risk of posttransplant infections in a group of patients undergoing liver transplantation as well as longer stay in hospital.

Keywords

computed tomography - infection - live donor liver transplantation - liver transplantation - skeletal muscle area - skeletal muscle index

Ethical Approval

The study was performed conforming to the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000 and 2008 concerning human and animal rights, and the authors followed the policy concerning informed consent as shown on Springer.com.


Patients' Consent

Informed patient consent was taken from the study subjects to enroll them in the study.




Publication History

Article published online:
11 June 2025

© 2025. Indian Radiological Association. This is an open access article published by Thieme under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonDerivative-NonCommercial License, permitting copying and reproduction so long as the original work is given appropriate credit. Contents may not be used for commercial purposes, or adapted, remixed, transformed or built upon. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)

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