Retrospective Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2016. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Hepatol. Feb 8, 2016; 8(4): 226-230
Published online Feb 8, 2016. doi: 10.4254/wjh.v8.i4.226
Total hepatectomy and liver transplantation as a two-stage procedure for fulminant hepatic failure: A safe procedure in exceptional circumstances
Rebeca Sanabria Mateos, Niamh M Hogan, Dimitri Dorcaratto, Helen Heneghan, Venkatesh Udupa, Donal Maguire, Justin Geoghegan, Emir Hoti
Rebeca Sanabria Mateos, Niamh M Hogan, Dimitri Dorcaratto, Helen Heneghan, Venkatesh Udupa, Donal Maguire, Justin Geoghegan, Emir Hoti, Hepatobiliary and Liver Transplant Surgical Unit, St. Vincent’s University Hospital, Dublin 4, Ireland
Author contributions: Sanabria Mateos R designed and performed the research and wrote the paper; Hogan NM supervised the report; Dorcaratto D designed the research and contributed to the analysis; Heneghan H and Udupa V supervised the report; Maguire D, Geoghegan J and Hoti E provided clinical advice and supervised the report.
Institutional review board statement: This study was reviewed and approved by St. Vincent’s University Hospital Institutional Review Board.
Informed consent statement: Patients were not required to give informed consent because the analyses use anonymous clinical data.
Conflict-of-interest statement: We have no financial relationships to disclose.
Data sharing statement: No additional data are available.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Dr. Rebeca Sanabria Mateos, Hepatobiliary and Liver Transplant Unit, St. Vincent’s University Hospital, Elm Park, Dublin 4, Ireland. rebecasanabria@gmail.com
Telephone: +353-1-2214000
Received: November 3, 2015
Peer-review started: November 3, 2015
First decision: December 4, 2015
Revised: December 17, 2015
Accepted: January 16, 2016
Article in press: January 19, 2016
Published online: February 8, 2016
Processing time: 84 Days and 13.5 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: We share our experience with selected cases of emergency total hepatectomy followed by liver transplantation for fulminant hepatic failure. This involves initial haemodynamic stabilization by recipient hepatectomy, creating a temporary porto-caval shunt to permit venous drainage during a variable anhepatic phase, then orthotopic transplantation once a suitable donor graft is available.