Living Related Liver Transplantation Across ABO Blood Groups / 대한이식학회지

ABSTRACT

To overcome the shortage of available organ in children, living-related liver transplantation(LRLT) has been introduced in Asan Medical Center since 1994. However, the use of graft livers across ABO blood groups is unavoidable since the organ donor is usually one of the recipient's parents in LRLT cases. In ABO-incompatible liver transplants from brain dead donors, the incidences of perioperative mortality, arterial thrombosis, and irreversible rejection and the rate of retransplantation have been reported to be greater. But recent reports from LRLT showed that 1-year survival rate of ABO incompatible cases were approximately 80%. So we started ABO incompatible LRLTs at our institute since Feb, 1996. Three cases of ABO incompatible LRLT have been performed thereafter, 2 with fulminant hepatitis and 1 with cirrhosis. Plasma pheresis or exchange transfusion was done to decrease isohemagglutinin perioperatively. Immunosuppression consisted of a quadruple-drug treatment in one, FK506 and steroid in two. The follow-up periods were 2, 4 and 13 months respectively. One child died of acute respiratory distress syndrome with normal graft function on 51st postoperative day. Two children are alive with good health, but one of them suffers S2 segment bile duct stricture, which is under the management with PTBD. The present results suggest that ABO incompatilbe LRLTs can be performed to overcome the shortage of the liver in children using a combination of the preioperative plasma pheresis and immunosuppression.