Medical teams at Taipei Veterans General Hospital completed the first living-donor domino liver transplant in the nation late last year, saving two lives during a 12-hour operation, the hospital said on Monday.
Domino liver transplantation refers to a procedure in which part of a donor’s liver is transplanted into a second person, who then donates part of their liver to a third person.
The idea is that the second person’s liver may not function in their own body, but can still function in the body of another patient with a different kind of problem.
Six years ago, the hospital’s liver transplant team successfully performed the first domino liver transplant in Taiwan using a liver from a deceased donor, and it built on that feat on Dec. 25 last year, this time using part of a liver from a live donor.
One of those receiving a liver transplant was a man surnamed Chen (陳), who began experiencing weakness and numbness in one leg in January 2012 and was later diagnosed with familial amyloidotic polyneuropathy (FAP).
A liver transplant helps patients with FAP control their illness.
Three medical teams consisting of 20 doctors first took part of the left lobe of the liver of Chen’s son and transplanted it into Chen.
They then took part of the right lobe of Chen’s liver and transplanted it into a woman in her 50s surnamed Huang, who had liver cancer.
Originally suffering from hepatitis C and liver cirrhosis, she was judged to need a liver transplant after being rushed to the hospital in June 2012, when she lost consciousness due to liver failure and was found to have a tumor in her liver.
Demand for liver transplants is high and cannot be met by the supply of organs donated by the deceased, while regulations covering living-donor liver transplants are strict, leading to a bottleneck in liver transplants, said Lung Jie-quan (龍藉泉), head of the hospital’s Department of Surgery.
In this case, the domino liver transplant has been successful so far, Lung said.
More than 1,000 domino liver transplants have been performed around the world, he said.
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