Liver Transplantation

Summary

Your liver is the largest organ inside your body. It helps your body digest food, store energy, and remove poisons. You cannot live without a liver that works. If your liver fails, your doctor may put you on a waiting list for a liver transplant. Doctors do liver transplants when other treatment cannot keep a damaged liver working.

During a liver transplantation, the surgeon removes the diseased liver and replaces it with a healthy one. Most transplant livers come from a donor who has died. Sometimes there is a living donor. This is when a healthy person donates part of his or her liver for a specific patient.

The most common reason for a transplant in adults is cirrhosis. This is scarring of the liver, caused by injury or long-term disease. The most common reason in children is biliary atresia, a disease of the bile ducts.

If you have a transplant, you must take drugs the rest of your life to help keep your body from rejecting the new liver.

NIH: National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases

National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases

Related Issues

• About the Operation: Liver Transplant United Network for Organ Sharing
• Questions and Answers for Transplant Candidates about Model for End-Stage Liver Disease (MELD) and Pediatric End-Stage Liver Disease (PELD) United Network for Organ Sharing

Find an Expert

• American Liver Foundation American Liver Foundation
• National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases
• Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network Health Resources and Services Administration

Clinical Trials

• ClinicalTrials.gov: Liver Transplantation National Institutes of Health

Start Here

• Getting a New Liver: Facts about Liver Transplants American Society of Transplantation
• Liver Transplant American Liver Foundation
• Liver Transplant National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases

Patient Handouts

• Liver transplant Medical Encyclopedia

Images

• Liver transplant – series — Normal anatomy Medical Encyclopedia

Living With

• Liver Transplant: Complications/Medications Department of Veterans Affairs
• Liver Transplant: Nutrition Department of Veterans Affairs

Specifics

• Living Donor Liver Transplantation American Society of Transplantation

Journal Articles

• Liver Transplantation

Statistics and Research

• The SRTR/OPTN Annual Data Report Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients

Children

• When Your Child Needs a Liver Transplant Nemours Foundation