Not many people experience living-donor transplants. So the process can seem like a mystery.
We asked a Mayo Clinic transplant surgeon to shed light on living-donor liver transplants, from how livers regrow to how patients recover.
We asked a Mayo Clinic surgeon: What do you wish more people knew about living-donor liver transplant?
Julie Heimbach, M.D., Transplant Surgery: The truly remarkable thing about the liver is its ability to regenerate. When somebody donates a part of their liver, the remaining side (the liver actually has a left lobe and a right lobe), the side that we don't remove, actually grows back to a whole-sized liver for the donor. And it grows in the recipient to the size that the recipient needs. In the first week it actually grows back to almost 70% of the original size.
So the liver is actually the engine and it does make the power for the rest of the body. So when patients have liver disease, they feel often profoundly fatigued.
Typically the outcomes are excellent following liver transplant, but the problem is we have this critical shortage of available livers so that not every patient who's waiting can undergo transplantation.
The vast majority of transplants are performed with deceased-donor liver transplant, with approximately 5% being done with living-donor liver transplant. Here at Mayo Clinic it's roughly been between 15 and 20% of our transplants each year. People don't know that it's an opportunity for their loved one.
The greatest reward that I note as a transplant surgeon is really just seeing the patient be able to return to full function after transplant.
One of our earliest living-donor liver transplant recipients was a father who received a living-donor liver transplant from his adult daughter. We came back together at his 20-year post-transplant visit and it's really fantastic to be able to see the father and daughter now and also the next generation to be there with them.
Dr. Heimbach has helped hundreds of patients gain a second chance at life through transplant surgery.
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