Living Donor Liver Transplantation

With an exponential increase in the number of Living Donor Liver Transplants (LDLT’s) being performed worldwide, the primary goal of the Living Donor Liver Transplantation Special Interest Group of the ILTS is education, benchmarking and best practice establishment in LDLT across the fraternity, and across specialties involved in LDLT. The LDLT SIG will lead advances in the field and foster international collaborative scientific efforts.

Steering Committee members

Just like an LDLT team has a multidisciplinary core team consisting of surgeons, hepatologists, gastroenterologists, anesthesiologists, critical care specialists, interventional radiologists, pathologists, amongst others, the topic coordinators and steering committee members of the LDLT SIG also consist of experts in these various specialties with extensive experience.

  • Young-In Yoon [2025], Asan medical center, Seoul, South Korea – Topic Coordinator
  • Nicolas Goldaracena [2025], University of Virginia Health System, Charlottesville, USA – Topic Coordinator
  • Arvinder S. Soin, Medanta Institute of Liver Transplantation and Regenerative Medicine, Gurugram, India – Affiliated Councilor
  • Prashant Bhangui [2025], Medanta – The Medicity, Haryana, India
  • Yaman Tokat [2025], Maslak Acibadem Hospital, Istanbul, Turkey
  • Tetsuro Sakai [2025], UPMC, Pittsburgh, USA
  • Nam-Joon Yi [2025], Seoul National University College of Medicine, South Korea
  • Koji Hashimoto [2025], Cleveland Clinic, USA
  • Ahmet Gurakar [2025], John Hopkins, Baltimore, USA

SIG Aims and Proposed Activities

  1. Education: Tailoring educational needs of each member of the SIG across specialties, and catering to the “young to experienced” spectrum using on-line educational material.
    • The SIG would work towards compilation and categorization of Educational material available on the ILTS Website pertaining to all aspects of LDLT in an easy to access and refer space (with relevant links)
    • A further aim of the SIG is to develop educational modules for both theoretical and practical education in LDLT, which could be accessed by all LDLT SIG members.
    • “LDLT in 10” – short videos to demonstrate technical aspects of LDLT for Surgeons
    • Summarizing current important literature on various aspects of LDLT, stimulate discussion on the same, and present expert opinion.
  1. Discussion:
    • The SIG plans to offer a platform for discussion of difficult case scenario’s, complex donor and recipient anatomy in LDLT, and management of issues very specific to the LDLT setting including the small for size syndrome, choice of the graft (right vs. left), minimal access donor surgery, graft dysfunction, and biliary complications
    • Answers from experts to complicated situations and FAQ’s

A dedicated email platform supporting discussion and communication in the Living Donor Liver Transplantation SIG has been launched. The email address livingdonor@ilts-mail.org aims to serve as a confidential clinical and educational discussion forum.

  1. Other functions of the SIG:
    • Reviewing and selecting abstracts on LDLT to be presented at the Annual Congress
    • Propose topics for LDLT Symposium/other Sessions at the annual ILTS Congress.
    • Establishing networking opportunities through in-person meetings at the ILTS annual meeting.
  1. Novel initiatives of the SIG
    • Increasing membership within ILTS by attracting non-liver surgeons, non-transplant hepatologists, radiologists, pathologists, interventional radiologists, and pediatricians interested in multidisciplinary collaboration within the sphere of issues in LDLT
    • A proposal for a pre-Congress LDLT workshop has already been submitted to the Executive and Scientific Committee of the ILTS 2020 Congress to be held in Istanbul
    • Organize consensus groups and publish the recommendations on LDLT topics.
    • Available job openings in various LDLT centers for Fellowship/training / observership will be posted on the LDLT SIG web page, with specifics like nature of work, academics involved, and resources available for paying the trainees to help young ILTS members who wish to travel for further training  make a better choice
    • One of the future aims of this SIG is to try and develop a worldwide LDLT center Registry.


  • Educational Material

The SIG has gathered all ILTS educational content related to living donor liver transplantation in one place! And this includes a dedicated SIG newsletter by the Steering Committee members. Use this platform without moderation:

SIG Resources


  • How to join

The LDLT SIG is open to any member of the ILTS, and we encourage all members with a special interest in any aspect of LDLT to join in. Members can join by selecting one or more SIGs from their profile page on this website: click on your name, your profile and add a SIG group.

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