Marginal Donors in Liver Transplantation: Expanding the Donor Pool

As the number of patients on the liver transplant waiting list continues to grow, the demand for donor organs increases. Expansion of donor criteria to include steatotic livers, livers procured as partial grafts, livers from NHB donors, or livers infected with hepatitis B or C have become a significant source of transplantable organs over the last 10 years. Improvement in the technology surrounding these strategies will continue to increase the donor pool but is unlikely to solve the organ donor shortage. As a result, other strategies that are still in the experimental stage, including xenotransplantation, synthetic allografts, and hepatic dialysis, will need to be developed.