Commitment to Donor Safety
Throughout the development of living donor transplantation
at the Penn Transplant Center, a central theme
has remained: a deep commitment to the donor's
health and safety. Living donor surgery remains
the only area of medicine and surgery in which
a major operation is performed on an individual
for whom it is not medically indicated. The donor's
risk is balanced by the benefit for the transplant
recipient.
The advantages of this approach include:
- The operation can be done before the recipient
becomes too ill.
- Because living liver donation transplantation
is a scheduled surgery, the recipient's condition
can be optimized prior to transplant (with regards
to lab test, ascites, infection, cancer treatment,
etc.).
- A shorter preservation time for the donor
liver.
- Because the recipient does not take a liver
from the cadaveric donor pool, this increases
the availability of cadaveric livers for those
who do not have a living donor.
|
