What is Liver Transplant?
The vast majority of patients requiring liver transplantation are patients with liver cirrhosis.
Today, the opinion that all patients with end-stage liver cirrhosis who have a life expectancy of less than 1 year are candidates for liver transplant, and these patients are recommended (or should be recommended). Because half of the patients with this condition die within a year due to this disease or its complications.
There is a success rate of over 80% in timely liver transplants.
Organ transplantation is the only form of treatment in patients with chronic organ failure. When the organ is not found, death is inevitable for these patients.
If patients are transplanted without worsening, i.e. their general condition is deteriorated, the risk of surgery decreases and their lifetimes are longer, and in late transplantation, their costs are shortened. Therefore, proper timing and appropriate patient selection are very important.
It is a risky operation due to the general condition of the patients and the size of the operation. This risk may increase even more with the severity of the disease that requires liver transplantation. Patients are usually exhausted in all respects and many are in a very severe condition. However, if there is no surgery, it is inevitable to lose. Here, liver transplantation means hope for a new life for these patients.
Liver transplantation is carried out between blood donors and donors. Although liver transplantation can be performed even among people who do not comply with blood groups in order to save lives in very urgent conditions, it can only be considered as a last resort due to the size of the operation in practice.
A liver transplant can be done from a close-up liver fragment that is not enough to endanger the donor’s life, but large enough for the recipient’s life, or from a liver donated by an organ donor from a brain death.
Unlike kidney transplantation, the patient liver is completely removed and replaced with a healthy liver. Liver transplant is the biggest and bloody surgery of general surgery. Its duration is around 8-18 hours. It is carried out by a very crowded and well-trained team.
If the liver to be transplanted is to be taken from the live donor, the recipient and donors are taken to separate surgery rooms at the same time, while the appropriate size piece is removed from the healthy liver in one hall, the diseased liver is removed in the other hall, and then the liver part from the donor is replaced.
After the operation, patients are taken to intensive care. The donor gets the goodness to be discharged after a few days of treatment. The transplant patient is taken to the service after gaining vital functions in the intensive care unit and the treatment is continued here.
In addition to general drug treatments, immunosuppressive drugs are given to all patients who undergo surgery. As a result of adjusting the doses of these drugs and adapting the patient to the new lifestyle, he is discharged home.
As with all organ transplant patients, patients undergoing liver transplantation use drugs that suppress the immune system for life. The ability of the organ to prevent the body from being excreted by the defense mechanism and to maintain its function and vitality is completely dependent on this drug treatment. If the drug is not used or used irregularly, the immune system immediately starts a war against this foreign liver, which ends with the loss of the organ and perhaps life.
The main purpose of liver transplant is to bring the person to normal, active, productive life, beyond just improving his health. People can return to their families, jobs, schools, travel safely, vacation.
Reproductive, fertility and sexual life, as well as impaired health, end to a large extent in end-stage liver patients. After liver transplant, sexual functions return, women start menstruating again, pregnancy and childbirth are possible.
Organ transplants are carried out in our country at the world standard. Success rates in transplants of important organs such as liver and kidney are above 80-90%.
However, a donor is absolutely necessary in all organ transplants. In our country where family ties are very strong, all patient relatives volunteer to give organs. Unfortunately, the organ of each donor does not fit every recipient, serious health problems arise in donors that prevent organ donation and organ intake cannot be performed in many cases.
Moreover, many organs such as heart, lung, pancreas are not available from live donors. The first condition to become a donor is that organ donation does not cost the donor’s health and life.
As in the whole world, the primary source of organ supply should be cadaver donors who have had brain deaths rather than volunteer donors. Organ donation in our country is far below the desired level. While the increase in chronic diseases increases the need for the organ, the increase in the number of cadaveric donors is far from responding to this.
Being an organ donor generally has no age, the person and organs are healthy It is essential that the health does not deteriorate after giving organs.
It can be donated to organs in person’s health or donated by the family in cases of brain death. Organ donation is accepted in all hospitals and institutions affiliated to the Ministry of Health.