About the Institute
Live Donor Transplant
A continued shortage of deceased donor organs has led to advances in living donor transplantation. Physicians and researchers working at Penn have created a very experienced living donor transplant program.
Using living people as a source for donor organs began with kidney transplant. Penn’s first live kidney transplant was performed more than 40 years ago. That recipient still has his original transplanted kidney with excellent kidney function and he is one of the longest surviving kidney transplant recipients in the world.
In the late 1980s, living donation was expanded to include liver transplant – initially just for children. The current team at Penn performed the first living donor liver transplant on an infant at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) in 1995 – from a mother to a child.
In the late 1990s, adult-to-adult living donor transplant was introduced, in which a segment of a liver is transplanted into another adult. The anatomy of the liver allows it to be divided and a portion transplanted into another individual. The liver has the unique ability to grow and regenerate after a segment is removed. The Penn Transplant Institute performed its first adult-to-adult living donor liver transplant in 1999 and is now one of nine centers participating in a National Institutes of Health study of outcomes in living donor liver transplant.
Abraham Shaked, MD, PhD, and Kim Olthoff, MD, lead the study of the immune response and liver regeneration in this consortium.
Penn Transplant Institute’s living donor program benefits donors and recipients by:
- Reducing the waiting period for a transplant, thereby potentially lowering the chance of dying while on the wait list.
- Reducing the time between procurement of the organ (time the organ is outside the body) and transplant.
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Need an appointment? Request one online 24 hours/day, 7 days/week or call 800-789-PENN (7366) to speak to a referral counselor. |
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