Background: Living-donor liver transplantation is now an established technique to treat children with end-stage liver disease. Implantation of left-lateral segment grafts can be a problem in small infants because of a large-for-size graft. We report 10 cases of transplantation using monosegment grafts from living donors.
Method: Of 506 children transplanted between June 1990 and June 2002, 10 patients (median age 196 days, median weight 5.9 kg) received monosegment living-donor liver transplants. The indication for using this technique was infants with an estimated graft-to-recipient weight ratio of over 4.0%.
Results: Graft and patient survival was 80.0%. There were no differences in donor operation time and blood loss between monosegmentectomy and left-lateral segmentectomy (n=281). Monosegmental transplantation had a high incidence of vascular complications (20.0%).
Conclusion: Monosegmental living- donor liver transplantation is a feasible option with satisfactory graft survival in small babies with liver failure.