Living-donor liver transplantation with monosegments.
BACKGROUND
Living-donor liver transplantation is now an established technique to treat children with end-stage liver disease. Implantation of left-lateral segment grafts can be a problem in small infants because of a large-for-size graft. We report 10 cases of transplantation using monosegment grafts from living donors.


METHODS
Of 506 children transplanted between June 1990 and June 2002, 10 patients (median age 196 days, median weight 5.9 kg) received monosegment living-donor liver transplants. The indication for using this technique was infants with an estimated graft-to-recipient weight ratio of over 4.0%.


RESULTS
Graft and patient survival was 80.0%. There were no differences in donor operation time and blood loss between monosegmentectomy and left-lateral segmentectomy (n=281). Monosegmental transplantation had a high incidence of vascular complications (20.0%).


CONCLUSIONS
Monosegmental living- donor liver transplantation is a feasible option with satisfactory graft survival in small babies with liver failure.
Kasahara
Mureo
M
Organ Transplant Unit, Kyoto University Hospital, Kyoto, Japan. mureo@kuhp.kyoto-u.ac.jp.
Kaihara
Satoshi
S
Oike
Fumitaka
F
Ito
Takashi
T
Fujimoto
Yasuhiro
Y
Ogura
Yasuhiro
Y
Ogawa
Kohei
K
Ueda
Mikiko
M
Rela
Mohamed
M
D Heaton
Nigel
N
Tanaka
Koichi
K
D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D006085:Graft Survival; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D016031:Liver Transplantation / Q000009:adverse effects / Q000379:methods* / Q000401:mortality; D019520:Living Donors; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged