Samsung Medical Center, 100% Pure Laparoscopic Living Donor Hepatectomy Regardless of Anatomical Variations

Starting 2013, the Organ Transplant Center at Samsung Medical Center had 25% of cases of pure laparoscopic donor hepatectomy. In 2019, 93% of donors with anatomical variations, excluding minimally invasive surgeries, received pure laparoscopic hepatectomy. 

And starting last year, the Organ Transplant Center aimed to perform ‘pure laparoscopic living donor hepatectomy for 100% of cases’ regardless of anatomical variations and thus far 430 surgeries have been performed.

Most importantly, its achievement includes offering purely laparoscopic approaches even to difficult cases with anatomical variations of the biliary tract or hepatic portal vein. The laparoscopy is prepared by carefully analyzing donor’s anatomical structures and establishing surgery plans while considering the safety of both donor and recipient. 

Meanwhile, through continuous publications in the Association of Surgeons of Great Britain, the Transplantation Society, and the American Society of Transplantation, etc., the Organ Transplant Center at Samsung Medical Center has been playing a pioneering role in liver transplant within Korea by steadily releasing results proving that the pure laparoscopic approach is safe since 'the complications of conventional open surgery and pure laparoscopic living donor hepatectomy are equal regardless of the anatomical variations’.