Liver transplantation in Medellin, Colombia: initial experience

The goal of this article is to present the experience of a new liver transplant team.

This review includes all patients who received a liver transplant between March 15, 2000 and March 15, 2003.

We performed 87 transplantations on 84 patients; 39 were females and 45 were males of average age 43.6 years, including 6 children. The majority of the patients were from Colombia with time on the waiting list of less than 1 month. The average donor age was 26.7 years. The preservation solutions included Wisconsin, HTK-Brettschneider (Custodiol), and Corpaúl (similar to Henn-Ross). In this study, 95.4% were whole livers, with 97.7% using the piggyback method. We placed 23 arterial grafts and 2 venous grafts for vascular reconstructions; 95.4% were duct-to-duct anastomosis (95.4%). Among the cohort, 8.3% experienced acute rejection and 1.2% experienced chronic rejection. Two patients required retransplantation due to hepatic artery thrombosis with biliary tree necrosis.

We consider that we have passed the crisis of beginning a new program with a reduction in postoperative complications and improving patient and graft survival. At present, we are a center that performs liver transplantations in adults and children, with a good organ donation culture in our city that allows us to offer a waiting time on the list less than one month. Neither a veno-venous bypass nor a T-tube were necessary for our cases. We also have developed a new, less expensive form of perfusing the liver in the donor.