Living donor liver transplantation

Abstract

The disparity between organ demand and the cadaveric donor supply for children resulted initially in a pre-transplant mortality of around 25% and was disproportionately high compared with adult patients [1]. The problem of size mismatch and the different epidemiology of pediatric donorship and terminally diseased children was chiefly responsible for that situation [2]. This stimulated the development of technical innovations, based on the segmental anatomy of the liver, which facilitated transplanting parts of large deceased donor livers into smaller recipients. © 2006 Springer-Verlag/Wien.