Live donor liver transplantation (LDLT) is a procedure in which a living person donates a portion of his or her liver to another. The feasibility of LDLT was first demonstrated in the United States in 1989. The recipient was a child, who received a segment of his mother's liver. Since that time, LDLT for children has enjoyed wide success and many pediatric programs use this technique.
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In the pediatric experience, survival of both the recipient and the transplanted liver (graft) at 1 year is about 90%. Donor complications have been very few. A rising population of adult patients awaiting liver transplantation has led to the application of LDLT for adult patients, and the preliminary results have been very encouraging. Only a handful of centers in this country perform the procedure.
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