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Liver transplantation

¹ Department of Radiology and ² Institute of Liver Studies, King's College Hospital, Denmark Hill, London SE5 9RS, UK

• Liver transplantation is an effective treatment for an increasing number of end-stage irreversible liver diseases, both acute and chronic.
  
• The goals of pre-operative imaging are to establish patency of the portal venous system and to exclude any contraindications to transplantation, particularly disseminated malignancy.
  
• A knowledge of the surgical procedure undertaken is vital for interpretation of the post-operative imaging.
  
• In the early post-operative period, routine surveillance ultrasound is performed at 1 day, 5 days and 14 days to aid early detection of vascular and biliary abnormalities, and to detect abnormal fluid collections.
  
• Delayed presentation of biliary abnormalities often indicates hepatic arterial occlusion or stenosis, this being the sole blood supply to the bile ducts post-transplantation.
  
• Survival following liver transplantation now exceeds 85% at 1 year for a number of diseases.
  

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