[Donor risk in living-related liver transplantation - the surgeon's point of view]

Living-related liver transplantation is a successful clinical approach to overcome organ shortage in hepatic transplantation. Possible advantages for the recipient of a living-donor transplant are a much shorter waiting period until transplantation and an almost elective time of operation which results in a decreased operative risk. Furthermore graft function of a living-related transplant is better than in cadaveric transplantation because of the shorter ischemic time and a careful examination of graft quality before organ donation. Removal of even more than 50 % of liver volume during the donor operation does not lead to an impairment of liver function in the organ donor. Intraoperative blood loss can usually be managed by re-transfusion of donor's own blood. Postoperative morbidity is about 10 - 15 % depending on the extent of the removed liver lobe. Most frequent postoperative complications are biliary leckages, wound infections and gastric/duodenal ulcerations. Up till now in more than 1000 living-related liver donations only three deaths occured due to thromboembolic and septic complications (< 0,3 %) (until 12/1998).