A NORTH-EAST surgeon has revealed plans to carry out the region’s first liver transplant involving a live donor this summer.

Professor Derek Manas, from the Freeman Hospital, Newcastle, said it was hoped that a live liver transplant programme would begin in June.

Still relatively uncommon in the NHS, although common in Europe, such transplants involve removing part of the liver of a healthy donor and transplanting it into a patient with liver failure.

Currently, liver transplants at the Freeman Hospital involve using tissue from deceased donors.

But as part of efforts to save more lives and increase the number of liver transplants in the region, the Newcastle team has been working with colleagues from Leeds and Edinburgh.

Prof Manas has spent six months in Hamburg, Germany, working with one of Europe’s leading experts in live donor liver surgery, Professor Dieter Broering.

It is anticipated that Prof Broering will supervise the unit’s first live donor transplant.

About 120 people with liver failure are assessed for possible transplants at the Freeman a year, with up to 50 transplants carried out. The hospital has about 30 patients waiting for liver donors at any time.

Prof Manas said: “Ideally we want to do ten live donor liver transplants a year.”

Members of the Freeman’s transplant team are already working with patients to identify possible live liver donors.

Surgeons at Leeds have carried out 11 live donor liver transplants so far, while surgeons in Edinburgh have carried out one.

Because livers can quickly regenerate, patients who donate part of their livers can expect to make a full recovery.

The risk of a donor dying from such an operation is about one in 200.