6/22/2009

Kentucky’s First Split Liver Transplant Performed at Jewish Hospital

(Louisville, KY) For the first time in Kentucky, a split liver transplant was performed by University of Louisville surgeons at Louisville’s Jewish Hospital.  Both patients are doing well.

A team of surgeons at Jewish Hospital worked with Vanderbilt University Hospital in Nashville, Tennessee to split the liver of a donor, half going to an adult male at Jewish Hospital and the other half to a child at Vanderbilt. The eight-hour procedure was performed on Saturday, February 14, 2009, by University of Louisville Professor of Surgery Joseph Buell, M.D., with assistance from UofL Assistant Professor Kadiyala Ravindra, M.D.  Beau Kelly, M.D., performed the liver transplant on the child at Vanderbilt University. 
 
The need for liver transplants far exceeds the supply of available donor organs. According to 2005 statistics from the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), the waiting list for a liver transplant now exceeds 17,000 patients. Despite considerable efforts to increase the supply of available deceased donor organs, the number of deceased donor liver transplants has been fairly constant at 5,000 livers per year. As a result, many patients continue to die while awaiting a life-saving transplant.

Jewish Hospital patient James Waterbury is a retired, 62-year-old Louisville native who was suffering from end stage liver disease.  Waterbury said, “I wouldn’t be here today if it weren’t for this liver transplant.  I was so weak and could barely walk before.  Now my mind is clearer, my reflexes are coming back and I am much stronger.”

Waterbury was listed on the transplant list November 12, 2008.

Buell said, “A split-liver transplantation most commonly involves the division of donor liver from a deceased donor, usually an adult, between a pediatric recipient and an adult recipient to maximize the benefit of each available donor organ.  This allows us to extend the life of not only one individual with a new liver, but two.”

About Split Liver Transplants
In some cases, it is possible to divide the donor liver into two parts and transplant the parts into two recipients. This procedure is very similar to a live donor liver transplant. In this circumstance, the donor livers are always from large, young "perfect" donors and are generally placed into two smaller adult or adolescent recipients. One recipient would receive about 60 percent of the liver (right lobe), and the other about 40 percent (left lobe).

The shortage of available organs was previously most acute for pediatric patients. Because of the small number of pediatric donors, the mortality rate among patients on the wait list was commonly high when only whole-organ transplantation was performed. In 1984, the introduction of reduced-liver transplant in which a portion of the adult liver was given to infants and children dramatically reduced this mortality rate. Over the past 20 years, the risk of death among patients on the pediatric wait list has substantially declined because of the ability to use these reduced-size grafts and because of the subsequent introduction of live-donor transplantation.

For interview opportunities with the patient or physicians, please contact Barbara Mackovic at 502-587-4230.

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ABOUT JEWISH HOSPITAL
Jewish Hospital is an internationally renowned high-tech tertiary referral center developing leading-edge advancements in hand and microsurgery, heart and lung care, home care, rehab medicine (including sports medicine), orthopaedics, neuroscience, occupational health, organ transplantation and outpatient and primary care.  Site of the world’s first successful hand transplant, and the world’s first and second successful AbioCor® Implantable Replacement Heart procedures, the hospital is also federally designated to perform all five solid organ transplants – heart, lung, liver, kidney and pancreas. In 2008, the hospital was recognized by U.S. News & World Report as one of the Best 50 Hospitals in the U.S. in heart and heart surgery; neurology and neurosurgery; and respiratory disorders.