About Memorial Liver Transplantation Center

Memorial Liver Transplant Centers are providing their services with their world renowned academic staff and specialist physicians, internationally standardized medical staff specialized in patient care following organ transplantation. Liver transplants are performed successfully for children and adults in centers where the world's best results are obtained regarding all types transplants, carried out on both living donors and cadaveric donors. The organ transplantation department not only is related with the operation process but also with laboratory, imaging units, operation room, intensive care, co-operation and quality of inpatient service floors and is also the reference center in the world. Due to insufficient organ donation in Turkey, the living donor rate reaches up to 80%. As a result of this situation in Turkey, the country gained the first place among the countries that can perform living donor transplantations. Memorial Liver Transplantation Centers also serve as an international training center for this reason. Surgeons from the most important hospitals on the world, mainly the USA, as well as from renowned universities in Turkey, are attending the training programs held in the Memorial Liver Transplantation Center in order to learn the procedure of organ transplantation.

In the Memorial Liver Transplantation Centers that have been pioneering and entering the world medical literature with performed surgeries, Liver transplantations without blood loss are being carried out as well in addition to special surgical techniques.

Liver Transplantation

Liver transplantation is the only treatment of chronic liver failure. This means that the sick liver is replaced with a healthy liver. Cirrhosis is the most common liver disease group in the world for which liver transplantation is performed. This is followed by congenital diseases and some liver tumors.

How to Find a Healthy Liver for Transplantation

An organ is required for organ transplantation, the source of organs are humans. The appropriate organ for transplantation can be obtained from deceased humans, or from  among relatives of a patient, thus a from a living donor. If the relatives of people who have lost their lives in the intensive care conditions (brain death) make their "organ donation" decision, the lives of many patients can be saved with these organs.

The liver transplant obtained from such donors is called "cadaveric liver transplantation". Since the number of organ donations is not enough, most of the patients lose their lives while waiting for a new liver. As a solution to this, it is possible to save the life of the patient by taking a part of the liver from another living human (a relative of the patient - living donor liver transplant). For this purpose, a relative having the same blood type of the patient volunteers for such a donation. The person who is the donor candidate undergoes intensive audits and evaluations. If there are no contraindications in terms of liver donation; the liver section (right or left) appropriate for the patient's weight is obtained from the donor and placed into the patients corresponding liver section.

Important Criteria for Liver Transplantation

For liver transplantation, the blood type of the patient and the donor have to be compatible. Then the examinations of the donor candidate begin. This process involves social, psychological and medical evaluations. Medical evaluation; consistent of blood and urine examinations, investigations of infectious diseases, radiological examinations and consultation of other medical units (cardiology, chest diseases, etc.). Many factors such as the amount of liver the patient needs, the general health of the donor candidate, the possibility of dividing the liver appropriately and the structure of the bile ducts play a role in the possibility of an operation between the patient and donor candidate.

Do Liver Transplantation Patients Have To Use Medication Throughout Their Whole Life?

As with all organ transplant patients, patients undergoing a liver transplantation must use medication for their lifetime in order to suppress their immune system. This is the most basic condition of treatment success. If medication is not used or used only irregularily, the immune system immediately initiates a war against the transplanted foreign organ, which may end up with the loss of the organ or even the life of the recipient.

Life After A Liver Transplantation

The goal of liver liver transplantation is to return a person to normal, active and productive life. The goal is to return both the patient and the donor to their pre-operation performance levels. The liver transplants realized in our center have a higher rate of success in comparison the globally accepted success rates.