Live donor liver transplantation for acute liver failure

Acute liver failure (ALF) carries a high mortality unless urgent orthotopic liver transplantation (OLT) is performed on time. Live donors are utilized to treat this irreversible condition first in pediatric cases and then in adults. Herein, we aimed to report our experience with live donors for ALF in a country of a deceased donor organ donation rate is only 1.5 per million people.

Among the 245 live donor liver transplantations (LDLT) performed from June 1999 to December 2005, 14 of them (6%) were performed for ALF in 8 pediatric and 6 adult cases. Right lobes were harvested for the adult cases whereas left lateral segments were harvested for pediatric cases, except one child transplanted with a right lobe graft. The etiology of the disease was; acute hepatitis B in four cases, hepatitis A in three cases, Wilson disease two cases, autoimmune hepatitis in two cases, and was unknown in three cases.

Three-year graft and patient survival is 79% for these series. Five of the six adult patients and six of the eight pediatric cases survived after transplantation. There was not any donor mortality or major morbidity.

LDLT offers a safe and effective modality of treatment for ALF for both pediatric and adult patients to overcome the problem of organ shortage especially in countries where the chance of receiving an organ from a deceased donor is low.