[Partial liver transplantation techniques for future clinical application]

Using grafts from brain-dead donors for liver transplantation is a very controversial subject in Japan and those candidates for transplantation who have received livers outside of Japan have been harshly criticized. Under these circumstances, a partial liver transplantation is an attractive method in terms of preserving the donor's life, freshness of the graft and easier donor availability. In other words, for adults with non-cancerous incurable liver disease the donor's left lobe can be transplanted after the recipient has had a left lobectomy, and for children with biliary atresia the whole liver and vena cava can be replaced with a parent's left lobe and iliac vein. Our report concerns the procedures of orthotopic partial liver transplantation for canines and humans.