Organ Transplants Support Group

It is a relative new procedure. It started out being done with children as recipients. It is not perfected yet and is still rare and risky to the donors. The person on the list needs to ask thier transplant center about it.

I don't remember the members name but there is someone that her daughter donated part of her liver and it worked fine. In fact family is the best donor match if you can get by with just a partial transplant of the liver. If I run across her again I will let you know her profile name. She was probably on the cirrhosis group....

It is true. Not all transplant centers do it though. They also do partial living donor pancreas transplants at some centers.

We asked our transplant center about this and they told us they had stopped any type of living donor liver transplants at their center simply because they were so dangerous for the donor.

LIVING DONOR transplants have become very common in Australia. But the donor must have some emotional relationship to you. The stats I've seen report good safety profiles for both living relatede donors and living unrelated donors. But like all operations it carries the risks of misadventure and infection. But rates of complications for the donors are low because they can't be donors without a full medical workup. They won't accept them. I am waiting for my ex-hubby to put on a bit more weight before they'll let him give me one of his kidneys. Lots of good vibes for your future, Mindy xxx

okay, this is how it was for US. at Strong Memorial Hospital, Rochester NY, they do more live donor transplants than anywhere else with the highest success rate anywhere (it has been 4.3 years since mine and I will have to dig thru paperwork to get the stats cuz I forget...) BUT, the risk for my daughter was approximately 1% after all the testing as she was a textbook perfect candidate for splitting her liver. She was in such perfect health that the team was truly amazed and they call her "Hero" and "BraveHeart" to this day. She had no difficulty with her surgery or recovery and she proudly shows her mercedes cut scar to anyone who has the guts to look at it - she has a lily tattoo on her tummy so the surgeons painstakingly gave her almost 3 hours of plastic surgery to stitch her back up and line up her lily vines as perfectly as they could - her scar is thin and pale and beautiful... I had staples, so mine is big and beautiful! Plus I had to have reconstructive surgery to fix some minor bile duct leakages, but all in all it was a tremendous success and they are still going strong at "Strong" with live donor transplants. In fact, they are opening a facility in Boston as well, so it will be easier for my daughter to continue her lifetime followup as she lives in Boston herself!

http://www.vcuhealth.org/?id=970...

This is the link to VCU and the Hume-Lee Transplant Center website that provides all the information available on Living Donors, Direct Donations, Cadaveric Donors, etc.

If the patient is "too" sick, a living donor will not be used because the patient would need too much energy for the body to recover. But, MCV has been doing living donor transplants for many, many years with high success rates and, in fact, does more living donors than cadaveric donors. Check it out and good luck.

Karen

Yaeh Mercedes!!
I am actually awaiting a liver myself and am lucky to live in Southern CA, where USC has successfully done (I believe) almost HALF of all their liver transplants with live donors in 2008!!

The main problem they said to me was that most people... by the time they come in to receive livers are to sick to be able to receive and then regenerate a partial liver. At USC there have been no deaths and only very few complications to the living donor...AMAZING PEOPLE!! HEROS. Live Life then Give Life!

Hi Mercedescut!
When you get a chance, say hello to Dr. Jain who's in charge of Strong Memorial Liver Transplant unit... Tell him Henry with the scars on his face from NYC says hello from Pittsburgh, and he'll know who I am... Why do I ask this?

Because, before he was the Head of the Liver Transplant unit in Rochester, he was one of the transplant surgeons here @ UPMC in Pittsburgh where at least half of all of the current Transplant Directors currently in charge of their centers across the country started out as fellows to learn how to perform these life saving operations before they became proficient enough to go elsewhere!

On another note, I'm so glad that everything has worked out well for you, and I'm curious as to how the donor's health is as well because, that is where the problem can sometimes occur with living donor liver transplants more often than with the recipient...

The donor was not made aware enough of the possible long term health effects and risks involved, or the donor didn't really understand the possible risks and as a result, some were really upset when their own health deteriorated as well as in some instances where the donors suffered more than their recipients...

And in some cases legal action was taken against some of these transplant centers that offered living donor transplants because of those types of outcomes which is sad since a whole lot more folks could have been given the gift of life had these individuals been better informed of just what type of sacrifice they were going to get into as well as preparing better legal documentation for these donors to agree to in order to avoid the possibility of being forced to shut down their programs as well...

To the original poster: What you need to do is to contact UNOS which is the United Network for Organ Sharing by going to their website and find out the success rates of living donor transplant centers currently offering such procedures, and form there you can get a better sense of which programs across the country you might want to look into and find out more about their individual programs.

Anywho, Mercedescut - I'm sorry for rambling away here and I just caught myself, but this time I'll just end with saying that this 12+ years liver transplant survivor wishes you all the best and a HAPPY NEW YEAR TO YOU AS WELL AS EVERYONE ELSE!!!

Finally, Please don't forget to say hello to Doctor Jain who last time I checked, was in charge of Strong Memorial's liver transplant program okay??? If he doesn't remember, just tell him the big Cuban named Henry from NYC who had scars on both sides of his face from being mugged in the subway...

He should remember me after you describe me to him that way! He was such a gentle and serene man who made you feel better even when you were so sick which was where I was when he treated me on a number of occasions while he was in Pittsburgh 2 UPMC where liver transplants were perfected by the father of liver transplantation, Dr. Thomas E. Strarzyl himself... Thanks in advance!!!

Respectfully,
Henry