Studies of Pediatric Liver Transplantation (SPLIT): a summary of the 2003 Annual Report.

The SPLIT database is accumulating comprehensive data on both pre- and posttransplant outcomes after pediatric liver transplantation. The relatively small numbers of children receiving any solid organ transplant, even at the largest single centers makes it difficult to study outcomes and changing trends from any single center and necessitates the formation of a large multi-center database. SPLIT has designed its data collection specifically to address outcomes relevant to children after liver transplantation such as growth and school performance and which are not collected by any other exisiting database. From the outcome data generated to date, a subset of which is presented above, hypothesis-driven studies can be designed. The first example of such a study was the development of the Pediatric Endstage Liver Disease (PELD) score. This model, which predicts death on the liver transplant waiting list for children with chronic liver disease was developed using data from SPLIT, has been adopted, and subsequently verified within the national cadaveric organ allocation system.