Can You Donate Your Liver If You're Still Alive?

  • Living Liver Donor
  • x Things to Know About Living Liver Donation

To many people, the phrase "living liver donor" may sound frightening. But did you know living liver donation is rubber? After donating office of your liver, your liver will regrow and work normally once again inside just a few months.

Near people who need a liver transplant spend months or years waiting for an organ donation from a deceased donor. Living liver donation is a better option for those with finish-stage liver illness because information technology ensures these patients get a life-saving organ transplant when they demand it.

Facts Almost Living Liver Donation

1. Living liver donation is safe.

Your liver is an incredible organ. Information technology really regrows to its original size within half dozen months of a living liver donation surgery. Like any surgery, the process does have some risks. Simply overall, living liver donation is safe. Our team volition e'er act in your best interests and rubber as a donor.

2. Your liver volition grow back to its full size.

It takes about half dozen months for your liver to fully grow back after a living liver donation surgery. Our ultimate goal is to make certain you're merely as healthy after your living donation surgery equally you lot were earlier your surgery.

3. You'll take a complete evaluation that includes tests and screenings to brand sure y'all're healthy enough to donate function of your liver.

The transplant team volition perform psychosocial and medical tests to brand sure you'll exist safe during surgery—and that you'll stay salubrious after your donation. Some of the testing you will have includes blood tests, urine tests, imaging exams of your liver, and cancer screening.

iv. You don't have to be related to someone to donate a lobe of your liver.

In fact, yous can donate to family and even friends every bit long as you have a close emotional connection with your recipient.

5. Your claret type must be compatible with your recipient'south claret type.

Besides being healthy, living donors must take a compatible blood type with their liver recipient.

vi. You can nevertheless take a baby.

Are you hoping to have children in the futurity? Altruistic a part of your liver won't brand it harder for you to go significant or evangelize a baby. Living donation doesn't cause fertility problems for women or men. Withal, women should wait ane twelvemonth after their donation surgery before they go significant. This gives your body the time information technology needs to heal.

7. Donors don't have to pay for their evaluation.

Beingness a living liver donor is an incredible gift. We don't want costs to stand up in the style of your determination. As a living liver donor, the costs y'all'll exist responsible for are paying for health maintenance tests to make sure you're healthy enough to donate a function of your liver. These include (but aren't limited to) a:

  • Pap smear,
  • mammogram, and
  • colonoscopy.

You may as well be responsible for out-of-pocket travel expenses similar gas, possible airfare, or food and lodging during your evaluation. You lot may too need to embrace whatsoever lost wages while yous're recovering from surgery because non all jobs requite paid vacation or sick go out. Some living donors are out of piece of work for ii to 12 weeks or more.

8. Y'all can become most of the screening tests you'll need at a lab or hospital almost your home.

When you get closer to your surgery date, you'll demand to have an evaluation visit at University of Utah Health, where your transplant surgery volition also take place. If you live outside of Utah, at that place are organizations that tin can assistance y'all pay for any travel costs.

9. Yous'll demand to stay in the hospital after living liver surgery.

Almost living liver donors stay in the hospital for five to x days. The transplant team will also ask you to stay close to Salt Lake City (within ii hours driving altitude) until your surgeon decides you're healthy enough to return abode.

ten. You lot tin can talk to other living liver donors.

Our living donor programme can arrange for y'all to speak to another donor who has donated a portion of their liver. If you're nervous or don't know what to look, talking to some other living liver donor can assist yous feel more confident virtually your conclusion.

Detect a Liver Transplant Physician

Fiscal Resource

Are you because living liver donation but are worried about how much information technology will cost? Learn more about financial resources by reading the American Guild of Transplantation'sLive Donor Financial Toolkit.

Commencement the Process

Lynn Clark with his donor

Hear From Our Patients

It'south been a long 36 years for Lynn Clark, 57, who has felt "rundown and exhausted" for much of his adulthood. The Hyrum homo's troubles began later a car accident in 1980 led him to receive a claret transfusion. He wouldn't observe until 2005 that the plasma was contaminated with hepatitis C, which caused cirrhosis and, finally, terminate-stage liver disease. He'd demand a transplant to survive.

Unfortunately, the wait list for a liver is long, and many patients die before they accomplish the top. But a new hope—living donor transplant—is arising for patients with liver failure who have a generous loved 1.

Read Lynn's Story