Frequently Asked Questions

Liver transplantation is the biggest change in your life. To adapt to this change, you have to take your medications every day and go to the hospital for routine outpatient visits. Even so, the majority of transplant patients have a much better quality of life than they did before the transplant. For many people, a transplanted organ has given them a second, precious chance at life and has symbolised a new beginning. The majority of transplant patients believe that their quality of life is very good compared with before.

In the first months after leaving hospital, you will need to come in once or twice a week for outpatient follow-up visits. The purpose of these check-ups is to monitor the patient's recovery and to detect any possible complications. At every visit, liver function is carefully assessed and an examination is carried out, so that any infection can be identified. The immunosuppressive drugs used to stop the body from rejecting the organ can cause excessive suppression of the immune system and infections if taken in too high a dose, and can lead to rejection of the transplanted liver if taken in too low a dose. As the risk of infection and organ rejection decreases, the frequency of outpatient check-ups will also fall. The purpose of these follow-up visits is to monitor recovery and to detect any possible complications.

Although it is a private hospital, organ transplants are carried out within the scope of SGK (the Turkish social security institution), and no additional fee is charged to patients or donors at any stage before or after the operation.

In liver donors, especially in right-lobe operations, the gallbladder must also be removed. The removed gallbladder is not attached to the recipient either. Neither the recipient nor the donor needs a gallbladder, and its absence causes no deficiency later in life.

The liver is the only organ in our body with the capacity to regenerate (renew itself), so the donor's liver begins to grow rapidly right after the operation and returns to its pre-operative size in about 3 months. In the same way, the portion received by the liver recipient also grows and reaches the patient's normal liver size within 3 months. No long-term deficiency or disability develops in the donor after the operation.

No.

In liver donors, the risk of death related to the operation is below 1%. Even so, because it is a major operation, complications related to the operation itself and to the anesthesia you will receive cannot be ruled out. These will be explained to you in detail in the informed consent form.

The first requirement for a liver transplant is blood group compatibility; the tissue matching that is checked in kidney transplants is not checked in liver transplantation. The Rh factor, which is important in blood transfusions, is also of no importance in organ transplants; it makes no difference whether the patient or the donor is Rh positive or negative.

The lower age limit for donating a liver is 18 (more than a day past the 18th birthday) and the upper limit is 50. Although this is not absolute, problems seen over the age of 50 may be an obstacle to this operation. Donor candidates between 50 and 60 years of age may be evaluated separately depending on the circumstances. People who are healthy, not obese, and whose liver function is within normal limits can be donors. The first requirement for a liver transplant is blood group compatibility; the tissue matching that is checked in kidney transplants is not checked in liver transplantation. The Rh factor, which is important in blood transfusions, is also of no importance in organ transplants; it makes no difference whether the patient or the donor is Rh positive or negative.

From the recipient's point of view, both types offer the same chance of success. Of course, deceased-donor transplantation is preferred because it carries no risk for the donor, but because of the shortage of deceased-donor organs, transplants from living donors are widely performed.

Yes, after the transplant you will need to take medication for life so that your body does not reject the new organ. However, in the long term, in many patients these medications do not exceed a few items a day.

Liver transplantation is the biggest operation a patient can undergo. Surgical technique has improved considerably over the years, success rates have risen and complications have decreased. Even so, it is a very difficult operation and, depending on its difficulty and the experience of the team, lasts 6–10 hours on average. A wide variety of risks exist, such as bleeding during the operation, infections afterwards, failure or insufficient function of the organ, organ rejection, blockages or narrowing in the bile ducts or blood vessels, kidney or other organ problems related to drug side effects, recurrent infections and the development of cancer. All patients who undergo a major operation can experience postoperative complications. Most transplant patients may experience some complications within the first few weeks after the operation, so you should not worry if you run into some problems.

In children and infants, the causes that lead to liver transplantation are often congenital diseases, foremost among them the failure of the bile ducts to develop from birth (biliary atresia). This is followed by PFIC (progressive familial intrahepatic cholestasis), Wilson disease, tyrosinemia, Alagille syndrome, congenital hepatic fibrosis, hepatoblastoma, hemangioendothelioma, alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency, Crigler-Najjar syndrome, Caroli disease, hypercholesterolemia, oxalosis, glycogen storage diseases, urea cycle defects and metabolic diseases.

It is performed for patients with liver failure. It comes in 2 types: acute liver failure and chronic liver failure. Chronic liver failure is also called liver cirrhosis, and 90% of the patients who need a transplant fall into this group. The most common cause in our country is chronic HBV (hepatitis B virus) infection. Besides HBV, there can be HCV, HDV, alcohol, autoimmune diseases (autoimmune hepatitis, primary biliary cirrhosis, primary sclerosing cholangitis), cryptogenic (cause unknown) cirrhosis, Budd-Chiari syndrome, Wilson disease, hemochromatosis, NASH (non-alcoholic steatohepatitis) and a wide variety of other causes. A transplant can also be performed for liver cancer that has developed on the basis of chronic liver disease.

Cirrhosis is the name given to the hardening and shrinking of the liver on the basis of chronic liver disease, with nodules (lumps) of various sizes forming on it. Liver cirrhosis can lead to fatal outcomes such as bleeding, jaundice, fluid accumulation in the abdomen (ascites), infection, and coma caused by the build-up of toxic waste. Because the liver is irreversibly damaged in cirrhosis, the main aim in treating cirrhosis patients is to prevent the complications that may develop. In patients with advanced cirrhosis in whom complications have developed, the only life-saving option is to remove the diseased liver and transplant a healthy one in its place. Only with an organ transplant performed in this way can the patient's life be saved.

Today, stem cell treatments are still at an experimental stage, and unfortunately a level of success sufficient to treat liver failure has not yet been achieved.

Because of its functions, the liver is a vital organ, and in liver failure medical treatments have proved inadequate; unlike in kidney failure, there is as yet no dialysis system that can take the place of the organ. For patients in this situation, the only treatment is liver transplantation.