What is a living donor liver transplantation?
Living donor liver transplantation (LDLT) is a procedure in which a healthy, living person donates a portion of his or her liver to another person. The feasibility of LDLT was first demonstrated in the United States in 1989. The recipient was a child, who received a segment of his mother’s liver. Since this initial operation, LDLT for children has been very successful, including at Stanford Medicine. Many pediatric programs across the country now use the technique of LDLT, in which a portion (typically the left lateral segment, i.e., segments II and III) of the adult donor’s liver is removed. In the pediatric experience, survival of the recipient child and function of the transplanted liver (graft) at 1 year is about 90 percent. Donors have had very few complications. An increase in the percentage of adult patients awaiting liver transplantation, many of whom cannot survive the waiting time for a cadaver liver, has led to the application of LDLT for adult patients, and the preliminary
