Liver transplant surgery

Liver transplant surgery is a procedure to replace a diseased liver with a healthy liver from a deceased or living donor. The Penn Medicine liver transplant team is ready 24/7 for a donor liver to become available.  

People with end-stage liver disease due to liver failure or liver cancer may be candidates for liver transplantation. Every patient who may require a liver transplant must undergo a thorough liver transplant evaluation with our team.  

If liver transplantation is for you, we place you on the transplant waiting list. Living liver donation, a Penn Medicine area of expertise, can substantially shorten your wait time. 

If a liver becomes available from a deceased donor, your transplant nurse coordinator will call you and ask you to come to the hospital. If you’re receiving a liver from a living donor, you have more flexibility about scheduling your transplant surgery.  

Once your team makes the decision to operate, we perform some basic medical tests to make sure you’re healthy enough for the procedure. Before surgery, your loved ones are welcome to wait with you in your hospital room. We’ll keep them updated about your condition throughout the surgery. 

Liver transplantation is an open surgery that usually takes between four and six hours. You have general anesthesia that keeps you asleep and feeling no pain.  

During surgery, your surgeon makes an incision across your stomach, removes your liver, and replaces it with the donor liver. After connecting your bile ducts and blood vessels to your new liver, your surgeon closes the incision with stitches. 

When the surgery is complete, we transfer you to the surgical intensive care unit (SICU) for close monitoring. Your family is welcome to be with you throughout your recovery from liver transplant surgery.

You may need to stay in the ICU for a few days until you’re ready to move to a regular hospital room. Your total hospital stay may last one to three weeks. 

While you’re in the hospital recovering, you start taking medications that prevent organ rejection. We repeat tests to check the function of your new liver. We also educate you and your caregivers on the care you’ll need after you leave the hospital. 

With liver transplant surgery, there are similar risks that come with any major surgery, such as bleeding or blood clots. Immediately after the procedure, we keep an eye on you to monitor for more serious complications, including: 

• Poor function of the new liver 
• Bile duct leaks 
• Infection 

The most serious risk after a liver transplant is rejection of the donor liver. Rejection happens when your immune system identifies the new organ as foreign to your body and attacks it. We perform regular liver function tests to catch rejection early, when it can be reversed.

If you need a lifesaving procedure like a liver transplant, you want to know you’re in the best hands. Penn Medicine has one of the 10 best liver transplant programs in the nation. We’re also experts in rare multi-organ transplants, for people who need a liver-kidney or liver-lung transplant. 

Our team understands that your family is part of your transplant journey too. The Penn Transplant Institute prides itself on a family-centered approach to transplant medicine. Your loved ones are always welcome; we want to see them at your bedside and at care team meetings. We look forward to building life-long relationships with all of you.