In an effort to identify medical risks posed to live liver donors, the American Society of Transplant Surgeons (ASTS) is creating a national registry to track the growing number of living donor liver transplants.
"The continued shortage of cadaver livers-combined with a liver transplant waiting list that has now climbed to more than 15,000-is leading a growing number of patients to consider living donor liver transplants. While the early experience with adult-to-adult living donor transplantation at centers performing this complex procedure is encouraging, donor deaths have occurred. Because of the lack of data, accurate risk assessment for the donor currently is not possible. We hope to solve that by establishment of the ASTS registry," said ASTS president Nancy Ascher. The registry was announced at Transplant 2000, the recent joint meeting of ASTS and the American Society of Transplantation. ASTS said that it also approved a "Position Paper on Adult-to-Adult Living Donor Liver Transplantation" that states that "the health and safety of the donor is and must remain central to liver organ donation.
Developed over the past year by the ASTS ethics committee, the paper establishes guidelines for donor and recipient selection, center criteria, and the best approach to obtaining informed consent.
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