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EBV after pediatric LT is a risk factor for PTLD. We wanted to evaluate the effect of intravenous ganciclovir on EBV viremia and to identify risk factors for chronic EBV viremia. All pediatric patients who underwent LT in Norway from 2002 until 2015 were reviewed. Twenty-two of 38 patients with viremia were treated with intravenous ganciclovir for a median of 22 (21-38) days. Treated and untreated patients were not different with respect to EBV seroconversion prior to transplantation or age at transplantation, but treated patients had significantly earlier viremia after transplantation (P=.005). There was no difference in the proportion of patients with reduction in virus load in patients treated with ganciclovir compared to untreated patients at 8 weeks. After 1 year, five of 19 patients treated with ganciclovir and six of 14 untreated patients had reduced virus load compared to start of viremia (P=.27). In conclusion, treatment with intravenous ganciclovir did not change the proportion of patients with reduction in EBV load at 8 weeks and 1 year after viremia. Younger age at transplantation, short time from transplantation to viremia, and lack of EBV seroconversion prior to transplantation were significant predictors of chronic EBV viremia., (© 2017 John Wiley & Sons A/S. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Objective: The aim of the present study was to assess whether the complication rate after ultrasound-guided percutaneous liver biopsies in children is affected by how frequently the procedure is performed by the operator., Methods: Medical charts and ultrasound descriptions of 311 ultrasound-guided percutaneous liver biopsy procedures performed by 18 radiologists at a single center from 2000 to 2011 were reviewed. Postbiopsy ultrasound the following day was performed after 97% of the procedures., Results: There were no differences in the procedure-associated rate of major bleeding incidents (2.2% vs 0.8%, P = 0.38), minor bleeding incidents (15.2% vs 10.2%, P = 0.31), or abdominal pain (13.0% vs 10.6%, P = 0.61) among operators who performed ≤10 procedures and those who performed >10 procedures during the study period. A higher rate of minor bleeding incidents were recorded after liver biopsy when operators had performed <10 biopsies compared with operators who had performed >20 pediatric liver biopsies during the study period (odds ratio 3.4 [1.3-9.1], P = 0.02). No association between the number of biopsies performed by the operator during the 2 years preceding the date of the biopsy and complications was found., Conclusions: Major complications are infrequent after pediatric liver biopsies and no relation between operator experience and major complications was found. We found a significant, but minor, effect of operator procedure frequency on the rate of minor bleeding incidents after ultrasound-guided pediatric liver biopsies.