Liver Transplants

Liver transplants have become an accepted form of therapy when chronic hepatitis becomes life threatening, usually as a result of complications of cirrhosis. However if the hepatitis B virus is still present and the patient is contagious, infection will recur in the new liver and often be acute. Attempts are being made to prevent this recurrence.

Before surgery, the risks are mainly the development of some acute complication of the disease which might render the patient unacceptable for surgery. With transplantation there are risks common to all forms of major surgery, as well as technical difficulties in removing the diseased liver and implanting the donor liver. One of the major risks for the patient is not having any liver function for a brief period. Immediately after surgery, bleeding, poor function of the grafted liver, and infections are major risks. The patient is carefully monitored for several weeks for signs of rejection of the liver.

Most patients should count on spending a few days in an intensive care unit and about four weeks in the hospital, as a minimum, although this depends how well the patient was before the surgery. The overall chances of surviving a liver transplant depend on many factors but overall 60 -75% of adult patients and 80 - 90% of children survive and are discharged from the hospital.