摘要
Over the last decades,liver transplantation has become the standard care for many forms of end-stage liver disease,both in adults and in children.The prognosis after pediatric liver transplantation(pLT)has steadily increased up to a patient survival at 5 years of 85%and an estimated graft half life of 31 years(1,2).In the early days of pLT,the transplanted organ originated from deceased donors.Since 1990,adult-to-child living donor liver transplantation(LDLT)programs have developed,which rapidly gained popularity,particularly in Europe and Asia(2,3).A major stimulus for LDLT has been the limited availability of deceased donors.The indications for liver transplantation have expanded,particularly for adult patients,at a higher rate than the availability of donor organs.Moreover,the quality of donor organs has steadily declined,resulting in a decreased utilization of livers from deceased donors for transplantation(4).The limited availability of qualified deceased donor livers has further stimulated LDLT:in Europe,for example,the percentage of living donor organs used for pLT increased from 7%before 2000 to 40%since 2010(1).
