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. 2022 Oct 24;20(1):146.
doi: 10.1186/s12955-022-02055-0.

Does living liver donors' underestimation about surgical outcomes impact on their health-related quality of life after donation?: a descriptive cross-sectional study

Ye Sol Lee  1 , Chin Kang Koh  2 , Nam-Joon Yi  3 , Kyung-Suk Suh  3 , Kwang-Woong Lee  3
Affiliations

Does living liver donors' underestimation about surgical outcomes impact on their health-related quality of life after donation?: a descriptive cross-sectional study

Ye Sol Lee et al. Health Qual Life Outcomes. .

Abstract

Background: In South Korea, the number of living-donor liver transplantations in 2019 was 1,188. Living liver donors (LLDs) undergo surgery and the postoperative recovery process for altruistic purposes. This study explored LLDs' unmet expectations about surgical outcomes and examined their impact on the donors' health-related quality of life (HRQOL).

Methods: This descriptive cross-sectional study utilized a self-reported survey. Data were collected at a university hospital in Seoul, South Korea. Among the 535 LLDs who underwent surgery for donation between January 2011 and March 2021, 124 participated in this study. The Korean version of the 12-item Short Form Health Survey version 2 (SF-12v2) was used to measure the HRQOL of LLDs. Unmet expectations regarding surgical outcomes were measured using four items: pain, length of hospital stay, speed of recovery, and complications. Logistic regression model was applied to determine whether the unmet expectations influence HRQOL in LLDs. Odds ratios with 95% confidence interval were used.

Results: The percentage of the participants who reported that their actual experiences for pain, speed of recovery, hospital stay, and complications were worse than expected were 34.7%, 22.6%, 9.7%, and 7.3%, respectively. Unmet expectations about surgical outcomes were significantly associated with physical and mental HRQOL after controlling for age, sex, education level, income, postoperative complications, recipients' death, time since donation, and satisfaction with the decision to donate.

Conclusion: LLDs should be supported in obtaining more accurate and realistic information about surgical outcomes to decrease unmet expectations, which may help improve their quality of life.

Keywords: Informed consent; Liver transplantation; Living liver donor; Patient education; Quality of life; Unmet expectations.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Short Form-12 health survey (SF-12) component summary The figure depicts the short Form-12 health survey (SF-12) component summary mean scores in LLD and general Korean population by time since donation
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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