Smoking: If you're a light smoker, stop smoking at least one month prior to your liver donation surgery. Because smoking can add risks to surgery, people who smoke heavily do not make ideal organ donors. Alcohol and drugs: Prior to surgery, you must be sober of alcohol and drugs.
If you smoke, you must quit for six weeks prior to surgery. If you have any major medical or psychiatric illness, you will not be eligible. You also must understand the risks of this surgery and comply with our instructions for short- and long-term follow-up medical care.
You cannot be a liver donor if you: Are under age 18 or over age 60. Suffer from heart disease or lung disease. Have an incompatible blood type.
Alcohol use may not preclude you from being a donor, but you may need a liver biopsy to be sure your liver has not sustained any damage. You should not resume drinking alcohol after surgery until advised to do so by the transplant team.
How Long Does It Take for a Liver to Regenerate After Donation? In a few months after surgery, your liver will regenerate back to its full size, and return to your pre-donation level of health. The other person's new liver will grow to full size as well, leaving both people with healthy, functioning livers.
Liver transplant can have excellent outcomes. Recipients have been known to live a normal life over 30 years after the operation.
Although mortality has traditionally been estimated at 1 in 250 for living donation, a more recent survey found a 1 in 1,000 chance of death among liver donors at experienced centers, and a morbidity rate of approximately 30%.
Unfortunately, you will have significant pain after surgery. We will give you pain medication but you will still be very uncomfortable for at least the first week. You will have less pain as each day goes by, but most of our donors have a significant amount of discomfort for two to four weeks after surgery.
To be scheduled for a living-donor liver transplant evaluation, you must be alcohol and substance free for a minimum of six months.
Traditionally, being liver transplant candidate requires “six months of abstinence” from alcohol. However, the so-called “six-month rule” may not save some of life especially in severe ALHep patients.
Rejection happens in up to 30 in 100 patients. The risk of rejection is highest in the first 6 months after a transplant. After this time, your body's immune system is less likely to recognise the liver as coming from another person. Chronic rejection happens in 2 in 100 patients.
Typically, a liver donor spends approximately seven days in the hospital, and will have an additional six to eight weeks of recovery time. Donors who are from out of town (greater than a two-hour drive) should plan on spending an extra two to three weeks in town after they are discharged from the hospital.
Livers from female donors yielded significantly poorer results, with 2-year graft survival of female to male 55% (95% CI, 45% to 67%); female to female, 64% (95% CI, 54% to 77%); male to male, 72% (95% CI, 66% to 78%); and male to female, 78% (95% CI, 70% to 88%).
Pungpapong et al. reported that patients with a smoking history had higher risks of vascular complications, especially arterial ones than non-smokers after liver transplantation, while patients, who gave up smoking for 2 years prior to transplantation, had lower incidence of vascular complications (1).
Myth: I'm not healthy enough to donate because of my lifestyle choices. Fact: If you smoke, drink or have an unhealthy diet you can still register to be a donor. You don't have to be in perfect health. There's every chance that some of your organs and tissues may be suitable for donation.
Avoid alcohol
If your liver transplant was due to an alcohol-related disease, you must never drink alcohol again as you risk harming your transplanted liver. This also applies if alcohol was thought to have contributed to your liver disease, even if it was not the main cause.
Arguments against liver transplantation for alcoholics include the presumption of relapse to heavy drinking, which might damage the new liver or lead to its rejection.
The life expectancy of a Liver Donor:
As much as a person without liver transplant meaning the general population. Now you know that living liver donation has no impact on how long and healthy you will live.
A living donor's liver fully regrows within 4 months and will ultimately regain full function. The donated portion does the same for the recipient. A liver from a deceased donor may also be split and transplanted into 2 recipients.
A person can donate a portion of his or her liver – up to 60 percent of it – to be transplanted into another person.
But some sick people find salvation from another source: living individuals. A living liver donation surgery involves removing part of a person's healthy liver — as much as 60 percent — and using this partial liver to replace the recipient's diseased liver.
You don't have to have the exact blood type as the person who needs a new liver, but you need to be what's called "compatible." This can be figured out with a simple blood test.
In summary, the leading causes of late deaths after transplant were graft failure, malignancy, cardiovascular disease and renal failure. Older age, diabetes, and renal insufficiency identified patients at highest risk of poor survival overall.
A study cohort of 251 liver transplantation (LT) recipients were followed up for 20 years. The actual 20-year patient survival rate was 62.6% in 207 adult living donor LT recipients, 68.2% in 22 adult deceased donor LT recipients, and 77.3% in 22 pediatric LT recipients.