Pediatric Liver News
February 14, 2013

It Takes a Village

We are particularly proud of our living donor transplant program, in which an adult donates a piece of his or her liver to a child, and for good reason. Over nearly two decades, from 1992 to 2010, we’ve transplanted 52 children with living donor transplants, and achieved one-, five-, and tenyear patient and graft survival rates comparable with national figures (Pediatric Transplantation 2012;16:486-495). Of particular note, our five-year survival rates ranged from 82 percent (1992-95) to 100 percent (2001–2003).

But getting a child safely through transplantation, we realized, takes a village. Team members include pediatric surgeons Paul Colombani, who in 1986 performed the first pediatric liver transplant at Johns Hopkins, Andrew Cameron, Andrew Singer, Nabil Dagher and Ben Philosophe; pediatric hepatologists Doug Mogul, Wikrom Karnsakul, and Kathy Schwarz; nurse practitioners Mary Kay Alford and Michele Felix; pharmacist Kim Conner; nutritionist Laura Cunningham; and our Children’s Liver Disease Research Network Coordinators Kim Pfeifer and Anita Osire.

To all of them, we say thank you.