Intentional portal pressure control is key to improving the outcome of living donor liver transplantation: the Kyoto University Hospital experience.

This study indicates that intentional portal pressure control under 20 mmHg can improve patient survival not only for recipients of small-for-size grafts but also in classically appropriately sized grafts undergoing A-LDLT. In a retrospective analysis of 100 transplants with intentional portal pressure control, we found that patient survival was significantly better at an even lower final portal pressure of 15 mmHg. As a result, we have adjusted our target portal pressure control protocol, targeting a final portal pressure below 15 mmHg. Portal pressure control allows living donors to donate the smaller left lobe in many cases, which is safer in terms of living donors' post-operative morbidity. As intentional portal pressure control can overcome size-mismatching between the donor and recipient, we propose that it may also be applied to deceased donor liver grafts and in the split-liver transplant setting when the graft size is considered small for the recipient. Intentional portal pressure control can be applied in many liver transplantation situations to overcome small-for-size problems.