Administering inhaled nitric oxide (NO) during surgery helps protect liver transplant patients from organ failure, according to a new study from researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB).

Touching stories of living donor transplantation are continuously happening in hospitals. One of these stories is reported recently in the August 14 issue of the World Journal of Gastroenterology because of its shining significance in hepatology. This article is going to bring comfort to many families.

A new report from a team of researchers at the University of Washington, Seattle, and the University of Alabama at Birmingham indicates that one of the main complications of liver transplantation can be treated very simply by allowing the transplant recipients to inhale nitric oxide (NO) during the operation in which they received their new liver.

The most appropriate system for organ allocation for liver transplants is a subject of continuing debate. In the U.S. the Model for End-Stage Liver Disease (MELD) was introduced in 2002 as a way of prioritizing those with the highest risk of mortality and since that time waiting list mortality and waiting times have decreased with no negative impact on post-transplant survival.

More than 78 percent of living right liver donors experienced post-operative complications, according to a new study that uses a replicable complication classification system. Most of the complications were minor, though some were more serious. The full findings are published in Liver Transplantation, a journal by John Wiley & Sons.

To meet the increasing demand for donor livers, researchers are searching for opportunities to utilize non-optimal livers to offer some improvement to severely ill patients. Some centers are now transplanting livers from hepatitis C (HCV)-infected donors into recipients with HCV-related cirrhosis.

For liver transplant recipients without hepatitis C (HCV), survival has improved over time. However, for recipients with HCV, survival has not improved, according to a study in the May issue of Liver Transplantation, the official journal of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD) and the International Liver Transplantation Society (ILTS).

Voluntary living liver donors should undergo a careful, but quick, workup and their desire for altruism should not be hampered by negativism from the transplant community, say the authors of a new study in the April issue of Liver Transplantation, the official journal of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD) and the International Liver Transplantation Society (ILTS).

In studies in mouse models, researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine have found that a cellular receptor involved in triggering cell death is also a necessary component of tissue repair and regeneration immediately following liver injury. This discovery could have implications for early intervention or therapy in liver disease such as cirrhosis or hepatitis.