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Can one liver
save two recipients? posted 10-6-97 Surgeons at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Medical Center are using a novel transplant technique that can save two lives with one donated liver. The technique is called in-situ because it involves dividing a donated
liver inside the donor cadaver. It effectively doubles the number of desperately ill
people who can receive a healthy donated organ and reduces the time patients must wait
before receiving a life-saving transplant. Although it's still new and is performed at only a few major medical centers in the United States, liver-splitting could become standard procedure in the future, experts predict. Currently, patients waiting for liver transplants outnumber donations by nearly 2-to-1 nationwide. UCLA's transplant center, the largest in the world, launched the In-Situ Split-Liver Program last July. Since then, UCLA surgeons have completed 49 in-situ transplants, using 27 donated livers. About 94 percent of the recipients have survived and are recovering successfully. Splitting a liver is possible because, unlike other organs, the liver can regenerate after being cut back. In most cases, the liver is split between a pediatric patient and an adult, with the child needing only 25 percent of the donated organ to heal. As the child grows, the portion of the transplanted liver grows too. Not every donated liver is a good candidate for splitting, said Maxine West-Heiermann, RN, regional director of the Southern California Organ Procurement Center. She said that the splitting program does not give UCLA's transplant center special priority for receiving donated organs. In the United States, 8,000 to 9,000 patients are on the waiting list for liver transplants, and only 4,000 donated livers are available each year. The livers come from people who are declared brain-dead but whose blood supply is maintained during the splitting process. The procedure is more complicated than traditional transplanting, but it can be done at any major transplant center that has adequate staff, said John Gross, MD assistant professor of surgery at UCLA. Related Site |