Postoperative Follow-Up for Living Liver Donors
The donor will return for two to three visits
to the Penn Transplant Center in the first month.
These visits will include a physical exam by the
nurse practitioner and surgeon as well as laboratory
tests. Follow-up scans (either CT or MR scans)
will be required soon after the surgery and several
months after the procedure to determine how the
liver has regenerated.
In general, most of the liver that was removed
grows back in two to six weeks. We recommend asking
for three months off from work, although most
donors do not take this length of time to return
to their employment.
As part of an ongoing national donor registry,
we will occasionally require data from the donors
for long-term follow-up. This may require a phone
call, or a doctor's visit, as well as laboratory
tests and an imaging study of some sort (CT or
MRI).
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