Becoming a living liver donor
Donor surgery
In a living donor liver transplant, doctors remove between 25% and 65% of a donor’s liver (between a quarter and over half of the liver) and place it into the recipient’s body.
Donor surgery usually follows these steps:
1
You and the recipient will go to the hospital on the day of the surgery.
2
Before your surgery, doctors will:
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Numb your belly area — the numbness will last 12-24 hours. This will help lower your pain after surgery and the amount of pain medicine you’ll need right after surgery.
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Put a needle into your vein to give you medicine and fluids (called an IV)
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Put you to sleep with general anesthesia
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Put in a catheter, which lets urine drain from your bladder while you’re asleep and recovering
​3
Donor surgery usually takes 6-8 hours. There are 2 types of living donation surgeries:
Open surgery: This is currently the more common type of surgery.
A surgeon will:
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Make a large cut in your belly
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Remove part of your liver, carefully cutting the blood vessels and other tissues that attach the liver
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Close the cut with stitches
Laparoscopic (also called minimally invasive), where a surgeon will:
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Make small cuts in your belly
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Put a wand-like camera in the cuts so they can see your liver. They put air or gas in you, so they can see better inside your body.
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Remove part of your liver through a small cut
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Close the cuts with stitches
After either type of surgery, surgeons place the donated liver into the recipient’s body right away. This surgery takes another 6-12 hours.
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More transplant centers are using robotic surgery. This is a type of minimally invasive surgery that uses robotic instruments and high-resolution cameras to remove a part of your liver. However, this is a new approach and not currently commonly used.