J Korean Surg Soc.  1998 Nov;55(5):719-725.

Adult-to-Adult Living Donor Liver Transplantation

Affiliations
  • 1Department of Surgery, Asan Medical Center, Ulsan University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea.
  • 2Department of Plastic Surgery, Asan Medical Center, Ulsan University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea.
  • 3Department of Anesthesiology, Asan Medical Center, Ulsan University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea.
  • 4Department of Internal Medicine, Asan Medical Center, Ulsan University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea.
  • 5Department of Radiology, Asan Medical Center, Ulsan University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea.
  • 6Department of Operating Room, Asan Medical Center, Ulsan University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea.
  • 7Department of Transplantation Program, Asan Medical Center, Ulsan University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea.

Abstract

BACKGROUNDS: Living-donor liver transplantation (LDLT) has been established as an efficacious option to resolve the shortage of cadaveric donor organs for pediatric recipients. This surgical innovation has significantly reduced the pretransplantation mortality for children, but the crisis of increasing scarcity of donor organs in our hospital has led us to extend LDLT to adult recipients. However, the extension of LDLT from pediatric recipients to adult recipients has been made only with limited success largely because of the inability of a relatively small-size left-lobe graft to meet the metabolic demands of an adult recipient. It has been postulated that a left-lobe graft smaller than 40% of the recipient's standard liver volume will not result in a successful adult-to-adult LDLT in chronic parenchymal liver disease.
METHODS
From February 1997 to October 1997, 10 LDLTs, using 9 extended left-lobe grafts and 1 right-lobe graft, were performed on patients with end-stage parenchymal liver diseases (9 cases of B-hepatitis-induced cirrhosis with or without an associated hepatocellular carcinoma and 1 case of alcoholic cirrhosis) at the Department of Surgery, Asan Medical Center. The ratios of the graft to the standard liver volume of the recipients were in the range of 30% to 55%.
RESULTS
All grafts showed immediate function, but delayed normalization of the serum total bilirubin was demonstrated in all recipients receiving left-lobe grafts. There were no mortalities and serious complications in donors. Two recipients died of sepsis 21 days and 40 days after transplantation, and 8 recipients (80%) are alive with good liver function at a median follow-up of 5.1 months (range 2~10 months).
CONCLUSIONS
The aim of this article is to report our experience with adult-to-adult LDLT shows that a graft size greater than 30% of the recipient's standard liver volume is able to meet the metabolic demands of adult recipients with chronic parenchymal liver disease and that LDLT might open a new donor pool for adult recipients when the supply of cadaveric organs is severely restricted.

Keyword

Adult-to-adult living donor liver transplantation

MeSH Terms

Adult
Alcoholics
Bilirubin
Cadaver
Carcinoma, Hepatocellular
Child
Chungcheongnam-do
Fibrosis
Follow-Up Studies
Humans
Liver Diseases
Liver Transplantation*
Liver*
Living Donors*
Mortality
Sepsis
Tissue Donors
Transplants
Bilirubin
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