Splitting Donated Livers Shown to Be Safe, Allowing Doctors to Save Two Lives from Single Organ, Study Suggests
Science Daily
Split liver transplantation carries no increased risk of failure in either recipient, allowing surgeons to safely save two lives from a single donated organ (graft), according to new research from Boston Children's Hospital published online in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons.
Due to their regenerative nature, livers donated by a deceased adult or adolescent can be surgically split into two unequally sized portions; the smaller segment is allocated to a young child awaiting transplant and the larger portion to an adult.
"Infants waiting for a donor liver have the highest wait list mortality of all liver transplant candidates, and dozens of children die each year waiting for size-appropriate organs to become available," says Heung Bae Kim, MD,director of Boston Children's Hospital's Pediatric Transplant Center and lead author on the study."If we can increase the number of split livers to just 200 a year, which would still affect less than four percent of the total number of livers transplanted each year, it would save virtually every small child waiting for a new liver."
Based on his recent findings, (which includes research on how well children function with split livers)Kim is advocating for changes in how donor livers are allocated -- automatically placing infants and small children at the top of the liver wait list, thereby giving pediatric transplant surgeons the option to split the first graft to become available. Once the liver has been split, the smaller portion is transplanted into a child and the larger portion is transplanted into the next appropriate adult on the list.
Split liver transplantation carries no increased risk of failure in either recipient, allowing surgeons to safely save two lives from a single donated organ (graft), according to new research from Boston Children's Hospital published online in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons.
Due to their regenerative nature, livers donated by a deceased adult or adolescent can be surgically split into two unequally sized portions; the smaller segment is allocated to a young child awaiting transplant and the larger portion to an adult.
"Infants waiting for a donor liver have the highest wait list mortality of all liver transplant candidates, and dozens of children die each year waiting for size-appropriate organs to become available," says Heung Bae Kim, MD,director of Boston Children's Hospital's Pediatric Transplant Center and lead author on the study."If we can increase the number of split livers to just 200 a year, which would still affect less than four percent of the total number of livers transplanted each year, it would save virtually every small child waiting for a new liver."
Based on his recent findings, (which includes research on how well children function with split livers)Kim is advocating for changes in how donor livers are allocated -- automatically placing infants and small children at the top of the liver wait list, thereby giving pediatric transplant surgeons the option to split the first graft to become available. Once the liver has been split, the smaller portion is transplanted into a child and the larger portion is transplanted into the next appropriate adult on the list.
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