Title: Combining living and deceased donation for pediatric first isolated liver transplantation: a win-win even in countries with high deceased donor donation rates
Source: Pediatric Transplantation 2024, 28 (1): e14684
Date of publication: February 2024
Publication type: Article
Abstract: Background: Split and living donor liver transplantations are both key surgical strategies for development of pediatric liver transplant programs. Often, however, teams tend to prioritize only one preferentially.
Methods: In the context of a very active national split liver graft allocation program (Italy), retrospective study of 226 consecutive pediatric first isolated liver transplants performed by a single team using organs from both deceased and living donors. Clinical characteristics and outcome were compared.
Results: In the context of a steadily slowly decreasing split graft offer, living donation activity steadily increased. Deceased and living donation accounted for 52.6% and 47.4% of transplantations, respectively. Both strategies were equally used for transplanting patients up to 30 kg of weight, while deceased donors were predominantly used for older recipients. Technical variants represented 86% of all transplants, with 183 consisting of left lateral segment grafts (76 split liver grafts and 107 left grafts from living donors). Outcome of both surgical strategies was similar, with excellent outcomes at early, mid-, and long-term.
Conclusions: Splitting livers of deceased donors and using living donation were complementary and non-competitive strategies for developping pediatric liver transplant activity. Implementing both activities in parallell allowed to maintain stable the number of annual transplant in Italy and allowed to reach superior outcomes. This analysis provides evidence that living donation plays a role in Italy despite an existing very active “mandatory-split” national policy.