Twenty years of liver transplantation in Brazil

This paper summarizes the 20 years of liver transplantation in Brazil, in the context of the Western world scenario. More than 5000 liver transplantations have been performed in the country since September 1, 1985. The living-donor liver transplantation, one of the landmarks in liver transplantation, was first described by our team in 1989. Brazil is the seventh country in number of liver transplants in the Western world and the first in Latin America. Almost 1000 procedures were performed in 2004, 19% of them involving living donors.