Team performs adult split-liver procedure

By Karen Ingwell

Two women each received part of a liver as six transplant physicians at UW Hospital performed the first split-liver operation in Wisconsin late last month.

The two women – one from Kewaunee and the other from Bangor – learned of the opportunity through a phone call from a UW organ procurement coordinator.

“She said she had some good news for me and that I’d better sit down. So I did just that, and then I started to cry,” says Judy Riley of Bangor, a small community near La Crosse.

The hospital coordinator advised Riley that a cadaveric liver had been donated that matched her blood type and she needed to get to UW Hospital immediately for her transplant.

At about the same time, Stephanie Ochab of Kewaunee received a similar call, advising her of the available donor liver.

The unique split liver technique, performed May 26, provides each patient with a new liver. The technique requires that physicians surgically divide a liver from a cadaveric donor, thus providing benefit to two patients from one organ donor.

In the past, split liver transplantation at UW Hospital typically involved one child and one adult. Surgeons would divide the organ into two transplantable segments, with the smaller of the liver’s two lobes going to the child and the larger part transplanted into the adult. The liver is the only human organ that can regenerate itself, and over time, the patient’s new organ will grow to a normal size.

The adult split-liver technique essentially divides the liver into two equal segments before transplanting them into two adults. Following the success of the adult split-liver procedure, the UW transplant team can offer their patients additional hope for a new chance at life.

“Split-liver transplantation is yet another way to expand the donor pool,” says Munci Kalayoglu, who led the UW transplant team and heads the liver transplantation program at UW Hospital. “If used in widespread practice, split liver transplants could eliminate deaths of children on the national waiting list and also offer adults an alternative source of organs.”

The UW team joins an elite group of programs across the nation to offer adult, split-liver transplants. In addition to Kalayoglu, the UW team included Anthony D’Alessandro, Stuart Knechtle, L. Thomas Chin, A. Dalgic, and Jeffrey Cooper.