Abstract

Background: Acute liver failure (ALF) in childhood is defined as biochemical evidence of liver injury, absence of known chronic liver disease and coagulopathy not corrected by vitamin K administration, with INR greater than 1.5 if the patient has encephalopathy or greater than 2.0 if the patient does not have encephalopathy. Objective: Report the experience of a single liver transplant center (LT) in the treatment of 8 children with ALF and review the literature. Method: Retrospective review of clinical charts of patients with ALF. Results: The median age was 8 years-old (range 0-11), three females. Five patients underwent LT. Two patients died, one of them LT. The etiologies were 4 undetermined, 1 autoimmune, 1 Wilson Disease, 1 Parvo virus and 1 chronic graft rejection. All grafts were from cad