Living Donor Liver Transplant Provides More Options
We have a long-standing history of delivering liver transplantation at the Froedtert & MCW health network. Liver transplantation, and especially living donor liver transplantation, is a team enterprise, and we are lucky to have a very committed, dedicated and experienced multidisciplinary team who are committed to providing the highest level of donor care, donor safety and outcomes with living donor liver transplantation. We have national and international data which show that the one-year, three-year and five-year survival with living donor liver transplantation is superior to cadaver liver transplantation.
The strongest benefits for a patient to have a transplant within an academic program like ours are the strength of the multidisciplinary team, the experience they have and the expertise they can deliver. In academic programs, we not only treat disease, but we also help in understanding the diseases. What that means to our patients is that the care they are going to get would be based on the most up-to-date evidence, with the adoption of cutting-edge technologies and innovations.
Currently, the number of patients needing a liver transplant with cirrhosis and its myriad complications far outstrips the number of available donors. Increasingly, we have the development of cirrhosis due to various causes, including the obesity epidemic, as well as alcohol-related disorders and a number of other things that increasingly necessitate a transplant, as sometimes the only and often the best option for patients.
The greatest benefit that we see is that we have a number of patients who have to wait a long time for a potential liver on the standard list while they deteriorate, get weaker and potentially have less chance of a good outcome in the long term. It really affords you the opportunity to make this an elective procedure as opposed to an urgent procedure.
The role as a living donor coordinator is, first, we review the donor's referrals, and then we would also um review the chart to make sure they have a type and screen so that their blood type is in the chart, so we would know if it would match the recipient's or not. Once the chart is reviewed, if we felt that the person met the qualifications, then the next step would be to reach out to the living donor and talk them through what the process looks like. Supporting the long-term health of the donor throughout the entire process is really a team effort.
I would want a living donor to know that this is an incredible gift that they're giving somebody, but it also has to be their choice, and it has to fit with where they're at in their life. And just to remind them that they're giving somebody an incredible gift.
