Combination donor hepatectomy and nephrectomy and early functional results of allografts.

As THE NEED for extrarenal organs increases, surgeons normally responsible for the procurement and later use of kidneys will find themselves more frequently involved in the harvest of other organs, such as the liver. The procurement of kidneys in this country has become regionalized, whereas the transplantation of livers has remained geographically centralized to only a very few institutions. Of the 30 liver transplantations done at the University of Pittsburgh in 1981, 20 livers were obtained from centers outside the geographic area normally assigned to the Transplant Organ Procurement Foundation of the University. The expansion of liver transplantation will be highly dependent upon the cultivation of this type of interinstitutional co-operation. The method of donor hepatectomy and nephrectomy described in this report can be easily modified to conform with the kidney harvesting techniques customarily used by surgeons of the referring organ procurement center. Careful