One human liver could save 2 lives

The human liver, with its ability to grow and recover, has the potential to save two lives when transplanted.

When someone dies unexpectedly and a family agrees to organ donation, a piece of the liver can be transplanted to an ailing child and the bulk of the organ placed in an adult with liver disease.

Those rejuvenating traits also allow a living donor to provide a segment of liver, while retaining the rest, said Dr. John Sorensen, medical director of the organ transplant program at LDS Hospital. Blood type and size determine liver compatibility, while matching other organs may be more complicated.

It's also possible to donate a segment of liver to an adult, but that's a much more involved procedure and there are more risks than with a child because a segment of an adult liver is about the size of a child's liver, providing much better results. It also leaves a larger portion for the donor in the period of healing and rejuvenation. The risks are higher for both donor and recipient when two adults share parts of one liver.

Sorensen and transplant coordinator Kristie Baker are featured today on the Deseret Morning News/Intermountain Health Care Hotline. The topic is organ donation, and they'll take calls from 10 a.m. to noon.

With any organ transplant there's some risk of rejection. But the outcome varies greatly depending on the organ.

"Livers tend to be what we call 'immunologically privileged,' " Sorensen said. That means there's a lower rate of rejection and when periodic episodes of rejection occur, physicians can generally control it.

That's not unlike rejection after a pancreas transplant. In about one-fifth of those transplants, the body does reject the organ, but it can be treated and the rejection goes away. When a kidney rejects, "there's a much higher probability of losing the kidney," he said.

Recovery time varies with type of organ transplant. For instance, someone who receives a liver will likely be in the hospital for two or three weeks, while the donor will go home within a week. A patient who gets a new pancreas is hospitalized a week to 10 days. It's the same with a kidney-pancreas transplant.

By far the longest waiting list is for patients who need a kidney, Sorensen said. In the past, two-thirds of those transplanted kidneys came from someone who died unexpectedly. Now, two-thirds are living donations, which generally have better outcomes.

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E-mail: lois@desnews.com