Children’s Hospital Los Angeles commemorated having performed 500 liver transplants — a milestone that only a handful of pediatric centers in the country have reached, officials said on Wednesday, Jan. 3.
“This is a tremendous accomplishment for our team, but it is more than a number,” said Yuri Genyk, chief of the division of abdominal organ transplantation and associates chair in transplant surgery at CHLA, in a statement. “Behind those 500 transplants are 500 children who have had a chance to grow up and pursue their dreams. To be part of that is immensely rewarding.”
Officials said the 500th liver transplant took place in December — a few months after CHLA celebrated the 25th anniversary of its Liver Transplant Program in September.
CHLA performed its first liver transplant in 1998, and since then its program has grown to one of the largest in the country, performing an average of 25 to 30 liver transplants each year. The hospital touts excellent outcomes for its liver transplant procedures, with one-year patient and graft survival rates of 100%.
“From the start, we have focused on providing superb quality of care and outstanding outcomes after transplant,” said Genyk, who has led the program since its inception. “That takes an enormous amount of expertise and dedication from multidisciplinary teams across Children’s Hospital. Our success speaks to the excellence of our entire institution.”
According to officials, part of the reason the hospital’s program is successful is due to their expertise in living donor transplants. Though living donors are common in kidney transplants, far fewer pediatric centers offer them for the liver because it’s a more complex surgery.
In the procedure, surgeons remove a section of liver from a healthy adult donor and transplant it into the child. After a few months, the donor’s liver re-grows to its original size.
The transplanted organ also grows to fit the child’s body.
Roughly one-third of its liver transplants come from living donors, according to CHLA, meaning the organ transplant comes from a parent or family member. In turn, by having a living donor rather than waiting for a matched deceased donor organ, the procedure can be performed immediately.
“A living donor allows a child to receive a lifesaving organ much faster,” Beth Carter, section chief of hepatology, and medical director of the Liver Transplant Program, said in a statement. “That’s important because children with liver failure can become critically ill very quickly. With a living donor, we can perform a transplant when the child is as healthy as possible.”
Rohit Kohli, chief of the division of gastroenterology, hepatology and nutrition at CHLA, noted that having a living donor leads to better outcomes as well.
“Our research has found that children who receive living donor organs have half the risk of dying — and half the rejection — compared with those who receive livers from deceased donors,” Kohli added.
Additionally, CHLA has made strides to improve liver care for children through the development of a new protocol that helps promote faster recovery in children after their transplant. The hospital also developed an artificial intelligence tool that can help predict whether patients with acute liver failure will need a transplant.
CHLA is planning an official 500th celebration later in January, at which staff will join with King’s College London faculty in Los Angeles to host a continuing medical education event for physicians on liver disease in children.
The event is being scheduled for Jan. 27, according to CHLA’s website.