Successful liver transplantation using a severely injured graft

Liver transplantation is a well-established life-saving procedure, and the organ shortage represents its major limiting factor. Innovative techniques, including split liver and living-donor liver transplantation, have accounted for a marginal increase in available organs. In addition, livers from extended donors, especially elderly donors or those with steatosis, from whom grafts were once considered unacceptable, are now being transplanted successfully.1– 4 Severe hepatic injury as a result of blunt trauma has remained a strong relative contraindication to transplantation, however. Only sporadic reports describe liver transplantation using injured livers.5,6 We report here the successful transplantation of a severely traumatized hepatic allograft and the clinical course of resolution of the injury in the recipient.