Methodist Medicare-Certified for Liver Transplants

The Methodist Hospital is now Medicare-certified for liver transplants, giving organ recipients access to a program with survival rates well above the national average.

The Methodist Liver Center, in partnership with Baylor College of Medicine, has performed 125 liver transplants in almost three years with a survival rate of 96 percent. The United Network for Organ Sharing, the national manager of transplantation statistics, said the national average of survival rates is about 85 percent.

The Center's certification expands the services currently offered by the Methodist/Baylor Multi-Organ Transplant Center to include the entire spectrum of medical and surgical treatments to Medicare patients with end-stage liver disease, said Sherrill Lanthier, director of Baylor's Multi-Organ Transplant Center.

Methodist earned Medicare approval after participating in a two-year analysis from the Health Care Financing Administration, which administers Medicare. The criteria for certification include two years of successful operation, number of transplants performed, physicians' years of experience, patient selection standards, and minimum survival rates.

Methodist's liver transplant surgeons, Drs. Phil Seu and John Goss, performed Houston's second split-liver transplant in July 1999 that saved two women's lives with one organ. Use of split-liver transplantation helps alleviate the donor-organ shortage and therefore shortens the wait time for a transplant, Lanthier said.

Drs. Seu and Goss were also the first in Houston to perform a living-donor transplantation between two adults, a procedure where a portion of a healthy donor's liver is transplanted into another person.

Overall, there is a critical shortage of livers for patients awaiting transplants. Currently, there are 17,221 patients nationwide waiting for livers, yet there were only 3,708 liver transplants performed in 2000. To contact the Methodist Liver Center, call 1-877-64-LIVER or visit http://www.methodisthealth.com.

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©2006 Texas Medical Center

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