Orthotopic liver transplantation in situs inversus adult from an ABO-incompatible donor with situs inversus

Abstract

Background: Situs inversus is a rare congenital anomaly characterized by the complete inversion of thoracic and abdominal organs. Liver transplantation in such patients or from donors in situs inversus is technically challenging because of the reversed anatomic structures. A small number of successful liver transplantation cases concerning situs inverus in either recipients or donors have been recently reported with different graft position and orientation. Here we reported an extremely rare case of liver retransplantation from an ABO incompatible situs inversus donor to an adult situs inversus recipient.Case presentation: A 53-year-old complete situs inversus man developed graft failure due to severe biliary complication after his first liver transplantation from a situs solitus donor. Re-transplantation was performed using a graft liver from a likewise situs inversus donor. Although the blood type between donor and recipient was incompatible, the post-operative outcome was excellent under proper prophylaxis to the antibody-mediated rejection.Conclusion: To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of liver transplantation from situs inversus to situs inversus in adult recipient. Liver transplantation using situs matching donor makes the procedure much easier at the surgical point of view, which has a benefit of less potential surgical complications. Furthermore, ABO-incompatibility is acceptable for donor allocation in cases that both donor and recipient are situs inversus. © 2014 Yu et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.