Supplemental liver transplant means the in situ or hereabout transplant of the liver graft (usually part of the liver), preserve the whole or part of the native liver at the same time. Its excellence is that the patient need no rely on the graft liver completely, in case of the graft failure, the patient has the second chance to get a second transplant.
If the preserve of native liver has no bad influence on the patients, theoretically, supplemental liver transplant can be performed at any kind of benign end-stage liver disease. Indications 1. hereditary metabolic liver disease; 2. liver failure because of reversible liver disease, such as acute liver failure, medicine-toxic liver failure, severe liver trauma. Once the native liver function recovers, immunosuppressant can be stopped, then the graft liver will shrink even disappear step by step. The patient is freed from the economical burden of whole-life use of immunosuppressant and the possible side effects of the immunosuppressant.
Contraindications: liver tumor, liver infection, biliary disease.
Supplemental liver transplantation was the first adopted transplant method to treat liver disease, but, the successful rate at early stage was so low that it was replaced by orthotopic liver transplantation. Whereas, from the end of 1980s, supplemental liver transplantation regained the favor of the doctors, the number of cases increased gradually, and the successful rate approached those of orthotopic liver transplantion.