The two Ohio women, who refer to themselves as “split-liver sisters,” received a liver transplant on July 1, 2020. But it wasn’t an ordinary transplant surgery: They had a split-liver transplantation.
An average of 17 people die every day while awaiting their turn to receive an organ.
Meanwhile, Contreras — whom Davis did not know at the time — had been patiently waiting for a new liver for several years. She almost died in the process. And there was a caveat: She was told she would be sharing the organ with another patient, through a rare and potentially risky medical procedure.A Jewish teen put her baby up for adoption in WWII. They just reunited.
A patient’s degree of sickness and their size are the main factors that must be considered before a split-liver transplantation, Hashimoto said. In this case, both patients were considered suitable in size and illness progression to be viable recipients of a partial liver.“The size of the patient determines the size of the liver needed,” Hashimoto said. “It’s also very important to take into consideration how sick the patient is. If you have a really sick patient, you need a bigger liver.
The reason, he added, is that “it’s very labor-intensive” and requires three medical teams working at the same time. One team works on the donor, while the other two perform the transplant surgeries.Hashimoto added that blood clotting and other complications are more likely with split-liver transplantation, though the long-term survival rate is the same.
The day after her transplant, “I was asking my nurse, ‘Do you know about my liver sister?’” Contreras recalled. “I was so excited to see her.”