Quebec man becomes first North American to receive regenerated liver transplant

Gérard Landry, a 64-year-old from Nouvelle on Quebec's Gaspé Peninsula, has become the first patient in North America to receive a regenerated liver thanks to a breakthrough technology that could transform organ transplantation and save lives across the continent.

Landry had spent about 15 years dealing with liver problems that progressed to cirrhosis and liver cancer. Just before surgery, his doctor told him the donated organ he was about to receive had been treated with a new machine—Liver Assist—used for the first time at Montreal's Centre hospitalier de l'Université de Montréal (CHUM). "It was like a Christmas gift," Landry said.

The Liver Assist system allows doctors to treat and assess a donated liver outside the human body before transplanting it. The machine circulates an oxygen-rich fluid through the organ to help reverse damage caused by a lack of oxygen during transfer, then switches to a blood-based solution to assess how the liver functions under conditions mimicking the human body.

"If it works on the machine, then it's going to work in the human," said Dr. David Hénault, the hepatopancreatobiliary surgeon and liver transplant specialist at CHUM who led the project and performed Landry's operation. The liver Landry received was particularly well suited to the technology because it was susceptible to oxygen-deprivation damage during the transfer process.

The CHUM performs about 70 liver transplants each year. Hénault said a study with Transplant Québec looked at livers previously declined for transplantation and assessed which ones might have been recoverable using the new technology. The team estimates the machine could make an additional 20 to 24 livers available for transplantation during its first year of use, with that number potentially growing as the technology becomes more widely used.

"We will be able to help so many more patients in need of a liver that are waiting on the transplant list," Hénault said. Studies have shown the technology can help reduce complications, reoperations, and hospital stay times for appropriate patients.

Landry's recovery has been unusually smooth. Blood work the day after his operation was already better than expected for his type of transplant, and he was feeling significantly better than the average liver transplant patient. "I do believe that the machine really helped in this case," Hénault said.