Long-term Follow-up of Living Liver Donors: A Single-center Experience

Data on the long-term consequences of living liver donation are scarce. This study examined clinical, laboratory, and radiological parameters and long-term health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in 237 living liver donors and 239 matched controls during 48 to 168 months of postdonation follow-up. We used the 36-item short-form health survey (short form-36 health survey, version 1 \[SF-36\]). The scores for the 4 following subscales were higher in nondonors than in donors: physical functioning (P = 0.009), role limitations due to physical health (P = 0.002), energy/fatigue (P \< 0.001), and bodily pain (P \< 0.001). The scores on the 8 subscales of the SF-36 were higher in donors with living recipients than in donors whose recipients died (P \< 0.001). Our results suggest that living donor right hepatectomy is safe and results in a postdonation HRQoL similar to that of nondonors in those donors whose recipients are healthy, while donors whose recipients die have a lower HRQoL that is significantly negatively correlated with the time since recipient death and improves over time.