Medical Animation: Living Donor Liver Transplant

This medical animation illustrates how surgeons at Cincinnati Children's perform a living donor liver transplantation from an adult to a child. The procedure entails the preparation of a portion of the adult’s liver (the left lateral section) to be transplanted into the child. The artery, portal vein, hepatic vein and bile duct are the structures we must prepare for reimplantation. While that is happening in one operating room, in an adjacent room the patient’s diseased liver is removed. Once prepared, the donor liver segment is removed, flushed with a preservative solution and the transplanted into the child. Over the next few months, the portion of the liver removed from the donor grows back such that the volume of liver is the same. The donated liver segment grows in the transplanted child.

There are a variety of diseases that are treated by liver transplantation. Living donor liver transplantation can be a good option particularly due to the limited availability of deceased donors.