Dr. Fawaz Al Ammary received his medical degree from Cairo University School of Medicine. He completed his Internal Medicine residency training at Case Western Reserve University (MetroHealth) in Cleveland, Ohio, and nephrology and transplant nephrology fellowship training at the University of Colorado in Denver, Colorado. He also completed a Ph.D. in health services research at the University of Colorado.
Dr. Al Ammary served as a full-time faculty member and medical director of the living kidney donor program in the Division of Nephrology, Department of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University from 2015 to 2022, and then he joined the University of California, Irvine in December 2022 as an Associate Professor and a senate faculty member.
Dr. Al Ammary has received National Institute of Health (NIH) Awards, including NIDDK K23 Career Development Award (2021-2026) and NIDDK R03 Award (2025-2027), a National Kidney Foundation, and philanthropic grants. His work broadly focuses on advancing access to living donor kidney transplantation and leveraging telemedicine services to improve transplant care accessibility for diverse populations. Parallel to this, Dr. Al Ammary serves as Chair of the Telemedicine Workgroup, American Society of Transplantation Living Donor Community of Practice (2020-current).
ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0928-2860
LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/fawazalaammary/
Liver transplant recipient survival by donor type
Fawaz Al Ammary1, Simeon Adeyemo1, Ahmet Gurakar2.
1Medicine, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA, United States; 2Department of Medicine, Johns Hopkins Univeristy, Baltimore, MD, United States
Background: Better understanding of long-term survival after liver transplantation is critical for shaping future interventions to increase access to liver transplantation. Prior studies often involved relatively small cohorts or limited follow-up periods. We sought to investigate the impact of liver donor type on long-term patient survival.
Methods: We conducted a retrospective U.S. cohort study of 144,761 adult (≥18 years old) and 12,449 pediatric liver transplant recipients between 1/1/1998 and 12/31/2022, using the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients (SRTR). The exposure of interest was donor type (living vs deceased donor). The primary outcome was all-cause mortality. Patients were followed from the date of transplantation until death or administrative censorship on 12/31/2023. We used Kaplan-Meier survival and multivariable Cox proportional hazards models to estimate survival probabilities and adjust for potential confounders.
Results: Among adults, the survival probabilities at 10 and 20 years were 69.5% and 45.7% for living donor recipients versus 62.7% and 35.6% for deceased donor recipients. Living donor transplantation was associated with a 13% reduction in mortality risk (adjusted hazard ratio [aHR] 0.87; 95% CI 0.83–0.92; P = <0.001). Among pediatrics, the survival probabilities at 10 and 20 years were 89.8% and 84.9% for living donor recipients versus 84.9% and 79.2% for deceased donor recipients, with an adjusted mortality reduction of 24% (aHR 0.76; 95% CI 0.62–0.94; P <0.01).
Conclusion: Living donor liver transplantation is associated with a significant long-term survival advantage over deceased donor transplantation in both adult and pediatric populations. These findings support the broader adoption and expansion of living donor programs.
[1] Liver transplantation
[2] Living Donor Liver Transplant
[3] Deceased Donor Liver Transplant
[4] Outcomes