First living-donor liver transplant performed in Georgia

A remarkable step in Georgian medicine – the first living-donor liver transplant - has been successfully performed in Tbilisi.

A surgical team consisted of Georgian and Japanese specialists spent 12 hours removing a diseased liver from a patient and replacing it by a portion of a healthy liver of the recipient’s own brother.

Gocha Ingorokva Neurosurgery Centre in Tbilisi was the place of the successful joint venture initiated by Nagasaki Medical School, Erasmus University and Georgia State Medical University.

"This is the first and very important step for our clinic in the direction of living-donor liver transplant,” Lela Managadze, public relations manager of the medical centre, which implemented its first living-donor kidney transplant two years ago, told Agenda.ge.

Managadze believed working with the Japanese specialists was a "good experience” for Georgian doctors.

"This kind of operation will be implemented in the clinic,” she said, adding patients were already registering for surgery.

In living donor liver transplantation, a piece of liver is removed from a living donor and transplanted into a recipient. The procedure, performed after the diseased liver has been removed, is possible because the liver regenerates or grows. The liver's unique ability to regenerate itself, combined with technological advances, allows more people to live.