Surgery planning for living donor liver transplantation (LDLT)

Living donor liver transplantation takes advantage of the fact that the liver is able to regenerate after partial resection.
In the light of the lack of deceased donor organs as well as religious and cultural obstacles, parts of the liver are taken from healthy donors to be transplanted to the diseased donees. Donor’s liver will regenerate up to almost 100% of its original size within a few months.
Surgery planning for both donor and donee must meet the following criteria:

Minimize risk for the donor by preserving a maximum remnant liver volume
Adapt the transsection line in the liver to the individual anatomical structures
Optimize the graft volume for the recipient

MeVis supports the surgeons by integrating these criteria into the three-dimensional workup.

With our results the following results are provided:

Visualization of the resection planning
Calculation of graft and remnant liver volume
Calculation of risk volumes for vessels being cut by the resection plane
Spatial relationship of the different vessel systems
Calculation of size and location of the liver segments

Preoperative planning substantially increases the safety and success rates of surgery. At the same time, unnecessary operations are avoided, thereby minimizing the strain on patients and avoiding unnecessary medical expense. Many leading international liver surgeons regularly use MeVis’ solution for their liver operations of which half involve live liver donations. This type of procedure calls for exact planning of the liver to be taken from the donor to avoid any risks.

An example (7.7 MB) for a living donor liver transplantation planning can be downloaded here.

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