Liver Transplantation
Author: mzPOTTER
What is a liver transplant?
Liver transplantation in its most common form, involves surgery to replace the damaged liver of a person for an organ from a donor. The donor may be someone who has died or a living donor. Most transplants are currently performed in adults are from deceased donors.
Who needs a liver transplant?
People who have a major failure of liver function require a transplant. This failure may be acute, which develops within days or weeks, or chronic, which is the most common and is caused mainly by liver cirrhosis. There are other causes of liver transplantation and hepatocellular carcinoma (liver cancer) or certain metabolic diseases. The main causes of liver transplantation in adults in Chile are chronic viral hepatitis C, primary biliary cirrhosis, alcoholic liver disease and autoimmune hepatitis.
When shown the transplant?
Liver transplantation improves quality of life expectations of people with chronic liver disease (mainly cirrhosis). The key is to not perform this procedure at an early stage of the disease, the risk of transplantation is greater than the risk of the disease itself, but also raise the transplant when the disease is well advanced and may be too late.
What are the specific indications for liver transplantation?
The indication for transplantation must be performed on the individual patient and always passes through the decision of a multidisciplinary team including hepatologists, hepato-biliary surgeons, social workers, psychologists, psychiatrists and other specialists. Some situations that are generally accepted as indications for transplantation are:
Deterioration of liver function, objectified as classification B Child-Pugh scale.
Complications of cirrhosis: Spontaneous bacterial peritonitis, ascites and hepatic encephalopathy.
Hepatocellular carcinoma when certain specified conditions.
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