Lurie Children’s Liver Transplant Team Completes Three Transplants in One Week — Including Rare “Split Liver” Procedure

The liver transplant team at Lurie Children’s had an extraordinary week in November, successfully completing three liver transplants and underscoring the team’s exceptional skill, collaboration and commitment to children who need life-saving care.

The highlight came with an internal split-liver transplant, providing life-saving transplants for a toddler and a young adult who had both been waiting for a suitable donor. Internal split procedures — in which a single donor liver is divided for use in two recipients in the same hospital — are among the most technically demanding operations in transplantation, and only a few institutions in the world have the expertise to perform them. Lurie Children’s previous internal split was six years ago. Earlier in the week, the team also transplanted an infant.

In all three cases, the patients were successfully extubated in the operating room, meaning the breathing tube was removed immediately after surgery. This rapid recovery milestone reflects the precision of the operations, the expertise of anesthesiologists and the postoperative management delivered by the multidisciplinary team.

“This kind of success is only possible with the incredible teamwork we have here,” said Dr. Juan Carlos Caicedo, Division Head of Transplant and Advanced Hepatobiliary Surgery at Lurie Children’s. “From our transplant surgeons, anesthesia teams, OR nurses, organ procurement specialists, hepatology colleagues and the entire liver transplant staff, it was a true team effort. Behind each procedure is a child, a family and a future restored, and moments like these reflect the heart of Lurie Children’s mission.”

Lurie Children’s is consistently ranked among the top three children’s hospitals in volumes for pediatric heart, kidney, liver, intestine and stem cell transplants.