Background: To ensure donor safety in adult-to-adult living donor liver transplantation, we established a selection criterion for donors in which left lobe (LL) was the first choice of graft.
Methods: Two hundred six consecutive donors were retrospectively studied. Donors were divided into two groups according to graft type: LL graft (n=137) and right lobe (RL) graft (n=69).
Results: Although mean intraoperative blood loss of LL was significantly increased compared with RL, mean peak postoperative total bilirubin levels and duration of hospital stay after surgery were significantly less for LL than RL (P<0.05). No donor died or suffered a life-threatening complication during the study period. The overall complication rate was 34.0%, including biliary complications in 5.3%. The number of biliary complications was four (2.9%) in LL and seven (10.1%) in RL (P<0.05). Logistic regression analysis revealed that only graft type (LL vs. RL) is significantly related to the occurrence of biliary complications (odds ratio 0.11; P=0.0012). The cumulative overall graft survival rates in the recipients with LL were not significantly different from that in the recipients with RL.
Conclusions: LL grafting should be considered favorably when selecting donors for adult-to-adult living donor liver transplantation.