Early experiences of liver transplantation in new opened hospital

Abstract

Background: Since the first human liver transplantation (LT) performed in 1963, LT has been most effective option for end-stage liver diseases and for selected patients with hepatic neoplasm. The number of LT is increasing until now and, also, the number of institutions performed LT is increasing. Herein, we will report early experiences of LT in new opened hospital. Methods: Our hospital was newly opened in Seoul, Korea in April 2019. We performed 33 LT from June 2019 to September 2021. Results: We performed 26 living donor liver transplantations (LDLT) and seven deceased donor liver transplantations (DDLT). On clinical features of recipients, major original diseases were 14 (42.4%) alcoholics and 12 (36.4%) hepatitis B, mean age was 54.1±9.7 years, 21 (63.6%) male patients, 11 (33.3%) combined hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), three (9.1%) ABO-incompatible patients, mean model for end-stage liver disease score was 19.1±10.2, mean operative time was 628 minutes, and mean post-LT hospital stay was 34.9±16.3 days. The complications of recipients were one (3.0%) post-LT bleeding, 10 (30.3%) infections, 10 (30.3%) hepatic vein outflow obstruction, nine (27.3%) acute rejection, and eight (24.2%) biliary strictures. Two (6.1%) patients were dead after LT, one patient was dead because of cardiac arrest in post 22 days after DDLT, and the other patient was dead because of alcoholic acute pancreatitis in post 1 year after LDLT. There were 4/27 (14.8%) bile leak complications of living donors, and no mortality of donors. Conclusions:The multidisciplinary approach with surgical, medical, radiologic, and anesthetic teams, and a wide range of administrative services, which can be provided with institutional and foundational support, is essential. We thought that the multidisciplinary teamwork including thorough preparation for LT is most important for which first started the liver transplant hospital.