Liver Transplantation: Definition, and Procedures – Weighing approximately 1.3 kg in older persons, the liver is the largest internal organ located at the top of the abdominal cavity on the right.
Liver function is very important in the body, such as producing proteins, breaking nutrients from food into energy, storing vitamins and minerals, producing bile fluids, helping the body to ward off bacteria, and get rid of toxins from the body.
If you have liver disease and other medications have failed, a liver transplantation may be the next best choice for you. You should know that liver transplantion has the highest survival rate. With proper medical treatment and lifestyle changes, your body can benefit from a new liver with little complications. We can help you understand more about liver transplants.
Liver Transplantation Definition
A liver transplantation is a medical procedure used to replace your failing liver with a new and healthy liver from another person called a donor. Livers can be transferred in whole or in part from deceased or living people.
Liver Failure Causes
Liver transplantation is generally performed when the liver organ has failed function e.g. Due to acute infections that occur suddenly or complications arising from drugs. Failure of liver function can also be caused by a history of long-term health problems, such as:
- Chronic Hepatitis develops into cirrhosis.
- Biliary atresia.
- Damage to the bile duct (primary biliary cirrhosis).
- Wound and narrowing of the bile duct in and around the liver that leads to the buildup of bile fluid in the liver (sclerosing cholangitis).
- Addiction to alco**hol.
- Wilson’s disease.
- Hemochromatosis.
- Liver cancer.
- Accumulation of fat in the liver (nonalco**holic fatty liver disease).
- Cystic fibrosis.
Read also:
Food that’s good for your liver
Liver transplant procedure
The liver transplant process is a medical action in the form of removing your liver organs and replacing them with other liver organs that are in healthy condition and come from donors. This transplant process can be done completely or partially. This means that donors can donate some or all of their organs.
This process of liver transplant is conducted through three stages:
Liver transplant procedure for donor
First, the donor surgery to obtain a healthy liver organ. Donors can come from two sources, the donor of the recently deceased person or the surviving donor.
If it comes from a deceased person, the donor process must obtain the consent of the family to give or donate the organs that are still healthy. Not only the liver, usually this process involves the removal of the cornea of the eye, heart, kidneys, lungs, even skin or bones.
Until after the removal, the donor should still be assisted by the respiratory machine despite its passing away. This is done in order for the donated organs to still receive oxygen supply.
The transplant process of living and healthy people can be immediately after the donor undergo a series of tests that prove that the body and heart condition are healthy and appropriate for the recipient. The liver regeneration properties allow the remaining liver organs of the donor to grow back into a new, healthy organ.
Back Table Surgery
The next stage is the back table surgery, which is carried out in the recipient’s hospital to make changes to the liver organ tissues of the donor to fit the needs of the recipient. These changes are included in the size of the liver and are carried out immediately before the liver transplant process.
Liver transplant surgery on the receiver
The final stage is the process of grafting or liver transplant. This process is the planting of liver tissue that is in the healthy condition of the donor to the receiver, replacing the liver tissue that has been damaged and no longer functioning properly.
The recipient is given anesthesia causing the sleep effect to avoid feeling pain. The surgeon will give the drug and infusion of blood transfusions to prevent the recipient from losing much blood when the liver grafting process is performed.
Then, the surgeon begins to make an incision in the abdomen to remove a broken liver, and then reattach a healthy new liver. Usually, the surgeon installs several medical tubes to help the body perform its functions properly after surgery.
However, the body often performs attacks on new liver tissues because it considers it a foreign tissue. This condition is called graft rejection, and should be left untreated, it can cause a new liver to become damaged. In order not to happen, doctors prescribe immunosuppressants that should be consumed by liver transplant recipients for a lifetime. However, the recipient also needs to be wary of some other complications after the grafting process.
Therefore, it is best to ask the doctor before performing liver transplant.
Read more about Organ Transplantation: Definition, History, Benefits, and Risk
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