Overview
Samar H. Ibrahim, M.B., Ch.B., pediatric gastroenterologist at Mayo Clinic, gives an overview of the pediatric liver transplant program at Mayo Clinic's campus in Rochester, Minnesota. The program offers both in- and outpatient clinic settings where Mayo experts specialize in treating pediatric patients with acute liver failure, chronic liver diseases, metabolic and genetic diseases of the liver, and liver cancers. As part of the nation's largest transplant center, the pediatric liver transplant team can partner with multidisciplinary team members, creating an environment of collaboration and resources to achieve strong outcomes for patients.
SAMAR IBRAHIM: Hello, everybody. My name is Samar Ibrahim. I'm one of the pediatric transplant hepatologists at Mayo Clinic. And today I'll be giving you an overview about the pediatric liver transplant program at Mayo Clinic. First, I would like to introduce our team. The transplant surgeons are Dr. Timucin Taner, who's the surgical director, Dr. Charles Rosen, and Dr. Julie Heimbach. The transplant hepatologists include me, Samar Ibrahim, I'm the medical director, and Dr. Sara Hassan.
In addition, we comanage our patients with the transplant infectious disease, Dr. Theresa Madigan. Judy Weckwerth is our transplant physician assistant. She plays an integral role in the follow-up of our transplant candidate and recipient and the inpatient service. And Carlie Lovejoy is our transplant coordinator. She coordinates the care of our patients through all steps of the transplant process.
We have at Mayo Clinic a multidisciplinary transplant team. This includes the transplant pharmacists, the transplant social workers, and the transplant dietitians. Here at Mayo Clinic, we have an integrated outpatient practice between pediatric hepatology and pediatric liver transplant. This enables us to reevaluate the need of liver transplantation in our patients with chronic liver disease on regular basis and optimize the timing of liver transplant evaluation, listing, and eventually transplantation.
We consult on hospitalized pediatric patients with acute and chronic liver diseases on the inpatient service at Saint Marys Hospital. We comanage these patients with our colleagues in pediatric intensive care and conduct timely liver transplant evaluation and when appropriate, listing for patient with acute liver failure or with chronic liver disease and recent decompensation. We are part of the William von Liebig Center for Transplantation and Clinical Regeneration so we have a well-developed infrastructure to enhance the care of our pediatric liver transplant candidates and recipients.
This includes our capacity to perform minimally invasive procedures like interventional radiology-based procedure or complex endoscopy-based procedure. These procedures are often an integral part of the care of both the transplant candidates and recipients. We evaluate patients with hepatobiliary neoplasia for liver transplantation and this includes the common pediatric liver tumors, such as hepatoblastoma and hepatocellular carcinoma, in addition to the rare one like cholangiocarcinoma.
We strive to optimize the outcome of these patients and our patients are cared by a multidisciplinary team of specialists, which include in addition to the transplant hepatologist and the transplant surgeons, the pediatric oncologist, the pediatric radiation oncologist, pediatric radiology, pediatric pathology, among other team members. We provide well-coordinated care with the genetic and metabolic specialists for our patients with metabolic and genetic liver diseases who require liver transplantation. And this care is through every step of the process.
We have transplanted and care for a large population of patients with metabolic and genetic diseases. And here I have a list of some of these conditions, including glycogen storage disease, urea cycle defect, congenital disorder of glycosylation, tyrosinemia, Crigler-Najjar syndrome, Alagille syndrome, and the broad category of progressive familial intrahepatic cholestasis. In addition, we have a combined liver and kidney transplant program. We comanage these patients with a transplant nephrologist.
Most of these patients have a combined transplant for kidney and liver, mainly for hyperoxaluria or polycystic kidney disease with liver involvement. We have a well-developed living donor liver transplant program and we reassess regularly a living donation as a viable option for a timely transplant, based on the acuity of the liver transplant candidates and their priority on the transplant list. At the end, I would like to leave you with some information about how to connect with us either by phone or by the web. And thank you for your attention.