Study: New Findings on Liver Regeneration for Living Donors

When the right lobe of a living-donor's liver is transplanted to another adult, the portion of the liver left in the donor is likely to regenerate significantly better if the surgeon does not remove the middle hepatic vein that drains the middle third of the liver, according to Japanese researchers.

The number of living-donor liver transplants has been steadily increasing, and researchers from Kobe University -- noting that the transplanted portion sometimes includes and other times does not include the middle hepatic vein -- set out to see whether this decision affects the recovery of the donor.

Reporting in the journal Transplantation, the researchers said they studied eight living donors -- four of whom gave up their right-lobe with the middle hepatic vein, and four of whom retained the middle hepatic vein.

"Comparison between the right-lobe and extended right-lobe donors did not show a clear-cut difference in the net increase of remnant liver volume at 3 months," the researchers reported.

However, the mean volume increase of the medial segment at the 90th postoperative day was seven percent in those who gave up their middle hepatic vein, and 61 percent in the right-lobe donors who retained the middle hepatic vein, the researchers reported.

"The middle hepatic vein plays a specific role in remnant liver regeneration of right-lobe living donors," the researchers concluded. "We expect that this knowledge will contribute to securing a margin of safety in right-lobe living-donor liver transplants."

Other Sources: Transplantation