{"id":140463,"date":"2025-02-17T16:14:07","date_gmt":"2025-02-17T21:14:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/?p=140463"},"modified":"2025-02-17T16:17:12","modified_gmt":"2025-02-17T21:17:12","slug":"lehigh-valley-health-network-first-to-bring-liver-transplant-to-our-region","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/?p=140463","title":{"rendered":"Lehigh Valley Health Network First to Bring Liver Transplant to Our Region"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lehigh Valley, Pa. (Feb. 17, 2025)<\/strong> \u2013 Lehigh Valley Institute for Surgical Excellence at Lehigh Valley Health Network (LVHN), now proudly part of Jefferson Health, has added liver transplant services to its already successful kidney and pancreas transplant program. LVHN has recruited top surgeons, transplant hepatologists and gastroenterologists to lead the new program, including surgeon George Rofaiel, MD<\/a>, Chief, Surgical Transplantation, and hepatologist Shahid Malik, MD<\/a>, Medical Director, Transplant Hepatology, both with LVPG Transplant Surgery.<\/p>\n

The first of its kind in the region, the program will offer transplantation to patients with end-stage liver disease, acute liver failure and liver tumors. The program is bolstered by Jefferson\u2019s resources, including access to necessary tools and services and cross-training with Jefferson\u2019s liver transplant experts.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a major development for the Lehigh Valley. It takes a large organization to build and sustain a liver transplant program and the support from Jefferson has helped make this possible,\u201d says Michael Pasquale, MD, Physician in Chief, Lehigh Valley Institute for Surgical Excellence and System Chief, Jefferson Health Perioperative Services. \u201cThere is a strong need for dedicated liver transplant services in this population. Our existing transplant program has doubled in just the last year and a half, and we continue to expand. We\u2019re offering more services and are transplanting more patients, so they have the chance to go on to thrive.\u201d<\/p>\n

The liver transplant program has been almost 10 years in the making and comprises \u201chundreds of people hours.\u201d It has required the skills and coordination of professionals from all levels of LVHN, as well as extensive education and training on the part of the nursing and administrative staff. The program will use livers from deceased donors, which make up 85-90 percent of liver donations nationwide. According to Dr. Rofaiel, the team will not be performing liver transplants from live donors at this time.<\/p>\n

Eligible candidates for the surgery will undergo extensive testing from multiple specialties including social work and psychology. This is necessary to make sure patients are medically and physically fit to undergo the lengthy transplant procedure and have the support system necessary for recovery afterward.<\/p>\n

\u201cI always say it takes 500 people to do a transplant,\u201d says Dr. Rofaiel, who notes the operation takes a lot of patience and a lot of skill. \u201cIt is a major disruption of the body, even affecting circulation to the heart and brain. We have about a dozen people at every operation, including two surgeons performing the transplant, along with anesthesiologists, perfusionists, dialysis nurses and cardiologists. Afterward, there are pharmacists, dietitians, social workers, rehabilitation specialists and coordinators involved. Liver transplant doesn\u2019t just take a village, it takes a sizable village.\u201d<\/p>\n

Patients are considered for a liver transplant after referral from a hepatologist or through self-referral. They may also be accepted through emergency departments and hospitals in the region if the situation calls for emergent evaluation. Mostly, transplants are only discussed when the patient has a very high risk of succumbing to their illness in six months to a year.<\/p>\n

If the patient is a candidate, tests are taken for blood type and a myriad of laboratory testing and imaging will be performed. These tests result in a Model for End-Stage Liver Disease (MELD) score that estimates each patient\u2019s chances of surviving their disease during the next three months. Organ allocation is determined by the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network. Livers from deceased donors are allocated first to the sickest patients (those with the highest MELD score).<\/p>\n

One of the challenges of liver transplantation long has been the availability of healthy livers and keeping them viable long enough to be useful. \u201cThe number of patients diagnosed with liver disease keeps growing while the number of donors has flatlined,\u201d says Dr. Malik. \u201cWe are also selective. Once we have a healthy one, it\u2019s a race against time since livers are only viable between six to 12 hours.\u201d<\/p>\n

LVHN is preparing to add normothermic machine perfusion (NMP) as a tool in the preservation of livers before transplantation. NMP, or \u201cliver pump,\u201d refers to the technique of preserving organs during the transplantation process with circulating perfusate that mimics blood flow. This technology can extend the life of a liver by many more hours, which means the program would be able to accept livers from farther away, increasing the donor pool.<\/p>\n

Once patients have had a liver transplant operation, they continue to be monitored for their lifetime by Dr. Malik and his team. While the rejection rate for livers is low, it sometimes occurs, and the team will prescribe immunosuppressant medication. In many cases, people go on to live healthy, productive lives with a liver lasting as long as 25 years.<\/p>\n

\u201cLiver transplant is truly one of the miracles of medicine,\u201d Dr. Malik says. \u201cMany of these patients are on death\u2019s door. With a transplant, they get a new lease on life.\u201d<\/p>\n

About Jefferson\u00a0<\/strong>
\nLehigh Valley Health Network is now proudly part of Jefferson Health. Nationally ranked, Jefferson, which is principally located in the greater Philadelphia region, Lehigh Valley and northeastern Pennsylvania and southern New Jersey, is reimagining health care and higher education to create unparalleled value. Jefferson is more than 65,000 people strong, dedicated to providing the highest-quality, compassionate clinical care for patients; making our communities healthier and stronger; preparing tomorrow\u2019s professional leaders for 21st-century careers; and creating new knowledge through basic\/programmatic, clinical and applied research. Thomas Jefferson University<\/a>, home of Sidney Kimmel Medical College, Jefferson College of Nursing and the Kanbar College of Design, Engineering & Commerce, dates back to 1824 and today comprises 10 colleges and three schools offering 200+<\/strong> undergraduate and graduate programs to more than 8,300 students.<\/strong> Jefferson Health<\/a>, among the top 15 not-for-profit health care systems in the country and the largest provider in the Philadelphia and Lehigh Valley areas, serves patients through millions of encounters each year at 32 hospitals<\/strong> and more than 700 outpatient and urgent care locations<\/strong> throughout the region. Jefferson Health Plans<\/a> is a not-for-profit managed health care organization providing a broad range of health coverage options in Pennsylvania and New Jersey for more than 35 years.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Information provided to TVL by:
\nJamie L. Stover
\nMedia Relations Specialist
\nMarketing & Public Affairs
\nLehigh Valley Health Network
\nAllentown, PA 18105<\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lehigh Valley, Pa. (Feb. 17, 2025) \u2013 Lehigh Valley Institute for Surgical Excellence at Lehigh Valley Health Network (LVHN), now proudly part of Jefferson Health, has added liver transplant services … Continue reading Lehigh Valley Health Network First to Bring Liver Transplant to Our Region<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":140465,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[69,482],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-140463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-in-the-valley","category-press-release-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/LVHN-Jefferson.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140463"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=140463"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140463\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/140465"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=140463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=140463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=140463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}