Liver Transplantation

Your liver helps fight infections and cleans your blood. It also helps digest food and stores energy for when you need it. You cannot live without a liver that works. If your liver fails, your doctor may put you on a waiting list for a liver transplant. Doctors do liver transplants when other treatments cannot keep a damaged liver working.

During a liver transplantation, the surgeon removes the diseased liver and replaces it with a healthy one. The new liver comes from a donor who has died. The most common reason for transplantation in adults is cirrhosis. This is a disease in which healthy liver cells are killed and replaced with scar tissue. The most common reason in children is biliary atresia, a disease of the bile ducts.

People who have transplants must take drugs for the rest of their lives to keep their bodies from rejecting their new livers.

National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases

Liver Transplantation on Wikipedia

'''Liver transplantation''' is the replacement of a diseased liver with a healthy liver allograft.

History

The first human liver transplant was done in 1963 by Dr. Thomas Starzl in Denver, Colorado, United States. Dr. Starzl performed several additional transplants over the next few years before the first short-term success was achieved in 1967. Despite the development of viable surgical techniques, liver transplantation remained experimental through the 1970s, with one year patient survival in the vicinity of 25%. The introduction of cyclosporine markedly improved patient outcomes, and the 1980s saw recognition of liver transplantation as a standard clinical treatment for both adult and pediatric patients with appropriate indications. Liver transplantation is now performed at over one hundred centers in the USA, as well as numerous centers in Europe and elsewhere. One year patient survival is 85-90%, and outcomes continue to improve, although liver transplantation remains a formidable procedure with frequent complications. Unfortunately, the supply of liver allografts from non-living donors is far short of the number of potential recipients, a reality that has spurred the development of living donor liver transplantation.

Indications

Liver transplantation is potentially applicable to any acute or chronic condition resulting in irreversible liver dysfunction, provided that the recipient does not have other conditions that will preclude a successful transplant. Most liver transplants are performed for chronic liver diseases that lead to irreversible scarring of the liver, or cirrhosis.

Techniques

Virtually all liver transplants are done in an orthotopic fashion, that is the native liver is removed and the new liver is placed in the same anatomic location. The transplant operation can be conceptualized as consisting of the hepatectomy (liver removal) phase, the anhepatic (no liver) phase, and the postimplantation ... [ Read More ]

External Resources

Death - A Love Story - Official site for the film about death, liver cancer, transplant, physician/patient relations and spirituality. Synopsis, awards, reviews, director biography, and credits.

Second Chances: Receiving the Gift of Life - Inspirational stories about donor families and liver, kidney, and heart transplant recipients. Detailed medical information about the heart transplant surgery itself and also the process for getting listed for a heart transplant.

Narratives of Liver Transplantation: Recipient Perspectives on the Quality of Life - An exploratory study into individual perceptions of end-stage liver disease and liver transplant with a special focus on Quality of Life concepts, including interviews with liver transplant recipients. Concludes that quality of life is best measured with respect to social norms.

LifeNet - LifeNet is the largest, full-service, non-profit allograft Tissue Banking System in the United States. LifeNet is also a non-profit, federally-designated, Organ Procurement Organization providing donation systems for heart, liver, kidney, pancreas,lung, and other organs for transplant.

Health Care Financial Administration - A list of medicare approved heart, lung, heart-lung, and liver transplant centers is provided.

Aaron's Gift Of Life - Personal page of the parents of this child after a lot of main surgeries and intestinal and liver transplants.

MZ Publication - Surviving Liver Diseases - This publication deals with: Liver, Liver diseases, in particular hepatitis, and liver transplant.

North Texas PBC Organziation - Site for information on Primary Biliary Cirrhosis. Learn about liver transplantation and proper nutrition in PBC.

Hepatitis Neighborhood - Patient support on Hepatitis C, HCV, HBV, HAV, HIV, with message boards, physician-hosted chat rooms, and information on Pegylated Interferon, Rebetron, liver disease, transplants, support groups, and risk factors.

Children's Liver Association for Support Services - Support services for families coping with pediatric liver disease and transplantation.

Related Pages on HealthTales.com:

Liver Cancer
Liver Diseases
Heart Transplantation
Kidney Transplantation
Lung Transplantation
Organ Transplantation
Pancreas Transplantation
Bone Marrow Transplantation
Islet Cell Transplantation