Liver Transplants From Donors

The worlds first successful liver transplantation was in 1967 by a surgical team led by Dr Thomas Starzl at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, Denver.

Liver transplantation is now performed at over one hundred centres in the USA and numerous centres in Europe and elsewhere. The one year patient survival is now around 85-90%, and survival rates continue to improve.

The World Health Organization estimates that 10% of the worlds population has chronic liver disease, including 25 million Americans. In China alone, half a million die of the disease each year. Currently 17,000 Americans are awaiting liver transplants, approximately six times greater than the number of patients awaiting heart transplantation.

Last year, only 30% of those in need of liver transplantation were transplanted due to a severe lack of donor livers available. This means there is an urgent need for alternatives.

Transplanting a liver can be accomplished in several ways. You can receive a donated liver from a compatible person who has passed away or from a live donor which involves transplanting half of their healthy liver. Or scientists are also working on transplanting livers from animals or growing new ones from a persons own stem cells. 

Liver Transplants From Living Donors

Transplanting from live donors involves finding a compatible donor who will give half of their healthy liver. It is usually an eight-hour operation. Surgeons believe that the technique will offer new hope to people on liver transplant waiting lists. Patients are usually released from hospital just a few days after the operation and the donors liver should grow back to 90 per cent of its former size.

Overseas Liver Transplant 'Packages'

Fed up with waiting years for a donor organ as their health deteriorates, more people are resorting to buying organs on the black market. To meet demand, a new breed of international companies are emerging with slick "organ transplant packages", which cover transport, surgery including a new organ, hospital fees and meals.

There are now centers offering kidneys and livers in countries such as China, India and Pakistan. A Singapore based company, which serves Australian patients, charges $57,400 to $76,500 for a kidney package, while liver deals cost $102,000 to $127,500.

Staff said after collecting patients from the airport, "everything is taken care of". The organ is described as "free of charge" as it is illegal to trade in organs, although donors are usually paid a small percentage of the package price. This is an alternative to waiting an approximate 8 years in some Western countries.

Despite the shortage of donors, experts warn against travelling overseas for a transplant because of a risk of dying, infection, a mismatched organ and other serious complications.

New Liver Grown From Stem Cells

In the UK in 2006, scientists at the University of Newcastle grew sections of human liver from umbilical cord stem cells. Initially such tissue could be used to test drugs, but eventually it may be possible to generate a liver suitable for transplant.

Transplanting Livers From Animals Could Soon Be a Reality

Xenotransplantation, the process of transplanting organs from one species into another, could soon be reality, easing the current shortage of organs for transplantation.

In the US, researchers have passed blood through membranes sitting in a suspension of cells from pig livers to demonstrate that the blood is detoxified by the pig cells. This method would be used to keep patients alive while they awaited a regular transplant.

In 2005 Dr. Warrens, from Imperial College London and Hammersmith Hospital, says: "Although the idea of xenotransplantation is far from new, it is only in recent years that many of the potential immunological problems, such as transplant rejection, have been solved, meaning the process of transplanting organs from one species into another, could soon be a reality.

"With the increasing shortage of donors for organ transplants, the use of animal organs may be the only hope for many suffering from problems such as kidney, heart or lung failure."

Despite the progress made in this field there are still a number of problems associated with transplanting animal organs into humans. The dangers of animal viruses crossing over and infecting humans are still a cause for concern, as researchers have been unable to create an animal model to test the likelihood and extent of any cross over. In addition, unknown animal pathogens could prove a potential problem. While scientists can create treatment and transplant rejection prevention strategies for known human pathogens, they are unable to do so for animal pathogens, whose effects on humans may not be fully known.

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