Living‐donor liver transplantation: an overview

It has been 16 years since the first successful living‐donor liver transplant was performed from a parent to a child. The overall recipient and graft survival, together with a low morbidity and mortality in donors, have resulted in the widespread acceptance of the procedure by both the transplant community and the public at large. Adult‐to‐adult living‐donor liver transplantation has been evolving over the past decade. Despite living‐donor transplant patients being better‐risk candidates than those who receive a graft from a deceased donor, and well‐established and experienced units achieving satisfactory results, overall recipient and graft survival recorder by registries can only be described as suboptimal. This, combined with the high morbidity and not‐insignificant mortality amongst donors makes expansion of adult‐to‐adult liver transplantation hard to justify on a risk‐benefit analysis.