Early liver transplantation is essential for familial amyloidotic polyneuropathy patients' quality of life

Nineteen patients, who had undergone liver transplantation for familial amy loidotic polyneuropathy, had answered a quality of life questionnaire inclu ding 61 questions on somatic and mental symptoms, social aspects of life, c onfidence and satisfaction before, one year, and Two years after transplant ation. We found that patient satisfaction was generally good two years or more aft er the transplantation Most of the patients were very or quite satisfied wi th the result. All of them had the drive to go on and felt hopeful about th e future. However, on the second follow-up, 37% of the patients noted that they,felt more insecure in their everyday life and there was a significant difference between the two assessments. The diarrhea score became worse bet ween one and two years after the transplantation and was closely related to the duration of the gastrointestinal symptoms and to the duration of the d isease before transplantation. The mental symptoms also increased significa ntly between the evaluations and this related to the severity of the somati c symptoms. Our conclusion is that liver transplantation should be performed before adv anced somatic symptoms start to develop in order to improve the patients' c hances of a good quality of life following liver transplantation.