Preventing Rejection and Fighting Infection You'll also be prescribed medications to help prevent infection after transplant surgery. These are typically taken for three to six months until your immune system is strong enough to defend itself against infection.
You will need to take medicines called immunosuppressants for the rest of your life. Rejection can occur any time the immunosuppressive medicines fail to control your immune system's response to your new liver.
After an organ transplant, you will need to take immunosuppressant (anti-rejection) drugs. These drugs help prevent your immune system from attacking ("rejecting") the donor organ. Typically, they must be taken for the lifetime of your transplanted organ.
Liver transplant recipients take medication for the rest of their lives to help prevent the body from rejecting the liver.
After the transplant, you must take medicine to keep your body from rejecting the new liver. You will need to take anti-rejection medicine every day from now on. These medicines have side effects. One side effect is that your body may be less able to fight infections.
Unfortunately, these missed doses or forgotten medications can lead to serious problems in transplant patients including acute rejection, chronic transplant damage and ultimately the failure of a transplant.
Avoid alcohol
If your liver transplant was due to an alcohol-related disease, you must never drink alcohol again as you risk harming your transplanted liver. This also applies if alcohol was thought to have contributed to your liver disease, even if it was not the main cause.
The waiting period for a deceased donor transplant can range from less than 30 days to more than 5 years. How long you will wait depends on how badly you need a new liver.
Liver transplant can have excellent outcomes. Recipients have been known to live a normal life over 30 years after the operation.
As little as 30 percent of your liver can regrow to its original volume. After you donate, your liver function returns to normal in two to four weeks, and your liver slowly regrows to nearly its full original volume in about a year.
Take the capsule every morning, preferably on an empty stomach, at least 1 hour before or at least 2 hours after a meal. Do not drink alcohol with the capsule.
All recipients have some amount of acute rejection. Chronic rejection can take place over many years. The body's constant immune response against the new organ slowly damages the transplanted tissues or organ.
Avoid unpasteurized beverages, such as fruit juice, milk and raw milk yogurt. Avoid salad bars and buffets. Refrigerate pate, cold hot dog or deli meat (including dry-cured salami and deli prepared salads containing these items), eggs or seafood. Consume only pasteurized milk, yogurt, cheese and other dairy products.
Organ transplants are life-saving, but finding well-matched donor organs can be difficult. Patients must also take immunosuppressive drugs for the rest of their lives to keep the immune system from attacking transplanted organs.
To prevent organ rejection, you'll need to take immunosuppressants (maintenance drugs) every day for life. The medication dosage may decrease over time as your immune system adjusts to the new organ.
Embedded Player Many transplant centers require people with alcohol-related liver disease to remain sober for half a year, before becoming eligible for the waiting list for a liver.
In summary, the leading causes of late deaths after transplant were graft failure, malignancy, cardiovascular disease and renal failure. Older age, diabetes, and renal insufficiency identified patients at highest risk of poor survival overall.
Many may live for up to 20 years or more after the transplant. A study says 90% of people with transplant survive for at least 1 year, and 70% of people may live for at least 5 years after transplant.
Most people live more than 10 years after a liver transplant and many live for up to 20 years or more.
Current survival rates indicate approximately 94% 1-year survival with median survival in adults of approximately 20 years, whereas 75% of children are alive at 20 years.
People needing liver or heart transplants often need to wait nine or more months. Recipients are assessed for compatibility to the donor (not just blood type, but for six different tissue antigen subtypes as well as general body size – e.g. putting an adult heart into a small child is not possible).
Survival rates
86 percent still alive 1 year after surgery. 78 percent still alive 3 years after surgery. 72 percent still alive 5 years after the surgery. 53 percent still alive 20 years after the surgery.
Most foods and drinks are completely safe for you to take after transplant. Please AVOID grapefruit, pomegranate, pomelo, blood orange, and black licorice, as these can increase the amount of anti- rejection medication in your body and this could harm you.
“Fifty percent of the transplants we did last year were on account of alcohol.” Nationally, Burton said, about 40% of liver transplants are due to alcohol-related illness, and national data show a spike in liver transplant referrals after March 2020.
Recovering from a liver transplant can be a long process, but most people will eventually be able to return to most of their normal activities and have a good quality of life. It can take up to a year to fully recover, although you'll usually be able to start gradually building up your activities after a few weeks.