The shortage of donor is one of the main restricting factors of liver transplantation worldwide. Lots of patients died during the waiting time. Even if they could wait until the arrival of the proper donor, their condition usually had severely deteriorated. How to increase the number of donor is now the worldwide pressing question.
In China , currently, liver transplantation is almost all based on cadaveric donors. With the development of this technique, the shortage of donor is increasingly serious.
Technically, we can do split liver transplantation, partial liver transplantation, domino liver transplantation, etc, to sufficiently make use of the limited cadaveric donor sources. But, these kind of methods are always limited by lots of factors in clinics, and, ultimately, it also depends on cadaveric donors.
Living-related liver transplantation can effectively resolve the shortage of donor. And, if done between kin, it has the advantage of low rejection rate, good prognosis, and so on.
Our center began the laboratory and clinic research of living-related liver transplantation early in 2003. In 2005, the hospital confirmed the launch of clinic LRLT, and gave great support as one of the important items of the hospital. In 2006, under the support of the hospital, the center plan to send transplantation doctors to one of the best LRLT centers in Asia for short-term advanced studies, and begin clinic LRLT thereafter. ( 2006-2-27 )