Reviewed by Megan Craig, M. Sc.
A surgical team from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis recently performed the first robotic liver transplant in the U.S. in May at Barnes-Jewish Hospital.
A surgical team from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis recently performed the first robotic liver transplant in the U.S. Read the full article in News Medical Life Sciences.
By Maia Niguel Hoskin, PhD
For Black Americans with liver cancer, getting a transplant can be especially arduous and daunting. And even though the procedure has a success rate of 85 to 90 percent, according to Cleveland Clinic, liver recipients who are Black are less likely to survive than those who are white or Hispanic.
Hugo Hool, MD, an oncologist and the director of the Hunt Cancer Institute at Torrance Memorial, in California, says racial disparities are so significant that race alone is the biggest predictor of who is likely to die of liver cancer — for both people who have had a transplant and those who have not.
Read the full article in Everyday Health.
By A.J. Hostetler
Researchers at the Stravitz-Sanyal Institute for Liver Disease and Metabolic Health at Virginia Commonwealth University hope a new five-year study will help them develop better diagnostic tools for patients with an aggressive liver disease that is a leading cause for liver transplantation.
In patients suffering from metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASH, formerly called NASH), a build-up of fat in the liver damages cells and causes inflammation.
Read the full article in the VCUHealth News Center.
By Shawna Khalafi
LAS VEGAS, Nev. (FOX5) – In recognition of Father’s Day and Men’s Health Week, a Las Vegas dad is sharing his story of a life-saving organ transplant, in order to spread awareness and inspire other men to take their health seriously.
“My son and my wife had to rush me to Mountain View Hospital here in Las Vegas, and within 48 hours during that July 4th weekend, I found out that I had less than 30 days to live because I had end life liver failure,” said Angelo Reyes. Read the full story from KVVU-TV Fox 5 News in Las Vegas.
By Veronica Giarla
When you’re a teen, it’s not very common to worry about what’s going on inside your body — especially not about potential organ failure. For Rob, now 14 years old, that happened in the blink of an eye. One day, he was scoring goals in soccer and hanging out with his friends. But in just a matter of hours, he was in acute liver failure.
“Rob woke up feeling not himself,” remembers Rachel, Rob’s mom. “He had diarrhea, was lethargic, and was getting worse by the hour. By the afternoon, his eyes were turning yellow, and that’s when I knew we had to go to Boston Children’s Hospital.”
Read the full article from Boston Children’s Hospital.
Contributor: Fnu Vikash, MD
While liver transplantation was less likely for Black patients with HCC, those who did receive a transplant experienced worse outcomes.
Black patients with hepatocellular carcinoma had lower rates of liver transplantation, as well as more complications and mortality when they did undergo a transplant, than other participants in a study of more than 112,000 patients, according to findings presented at the 2023 ASCO Annual Meeting.
Read the full article in Physician’s Weekly.
By University of Pittsburgh
Dozens of children die each year in the U.S. while waiting for a new liver. A new analysis led by University of Pittsburgh and UPMC physician-researchers suggests that greater use of partial liver transplants — either from a living donor or by splitting a deceased donor’s liver for two recipients — could save many of these young lives.
Published in the July issue of Liver Transplantation, the study found that transplant centers offering partial liver transplants, also known as technical variant grafts (TVGs), had fewer waitlist deaths than those providing traditional whole deceased donor liver transplants only. The findings suggest that more training, support and collaboration across centers to support TVG transplants could help eliminate pediatric liver waitlist mortality.
Read the full article in Newswise.
By Mindy Basara
BALTIMORE — When one doctor at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center tells her young patients, “I know what you’re going through,” she truly does.
When Kathryn Smith was 17, she got very sick.
“I had cirrhosis of the liver that had not been picked up which is not totally uncommon,” Smith said. Read the full story from WBAL TV 11 News.
In a study, undocumented citizenship, unstable housing and uninsured status were common among people who did not get referrals for transplant evaluation.
Among people whose liver is failing, the perpetual shortage of donor organs inhibits expectations of a timely, life-saving transplant. New research suggests that these people who initially seek care at safety-net hospitals may face additional obstacles to being considered for transplant.
A study of three safety-net hospitals showed that, among patients whose measures of liver health would typically result in a referral for transplant evaluation, only about one-fourth received the referral. The finding was published June 8 in JAMA Network Open. Read more from the UW Medicine Newsroom.
By Rose Conlon
OLATHE, Kansas — Last year, Gary Gray’s liver disease got so bad that it began poisoning his mind, sucking him into imaginary conversations with people who weren’t there.
At one point, he became convinced that his family had turned their home into a commercial haunted house. Check out the full story on NPR.