Vall d'Hebron is the first center in the State to perform a simultaneous pediatric heart and liver transplant

It is a procedure in which first the heart and then the liver were transplanted to a patient with congenital heart disease that had caused terminal failure of both organs.

March 2024

At the end of 2024, the Vall d'Hebron Hospital became the first center in the State to perform a simultaneous pediatric heart and liver transplant using a technique that allows the liver to be preserved beyond eight hours after extraction and reduces complications during the surgical intervention.

The intervention, lasting about 16 hours, in which more than 30 professionals participated, made it possible to save the life of a 15-year-old who was born with a single ventricle and developed severe liver cirrhosis.

Key to the success of this intervention was the use of a new technology, HOPE, for its meaning in English and also is the acronym for Hypothermic Oxygenated Perfusion. This technique circulates a cold, oxygenated solution through the donor's liver and allows it to be kept in better conditions outside the body, which reduces the risk of ischemic damage, gives cardiac surgeons more room to perform the heart transplant and decreases postoperative complications.

In Europe, there are few institutions that have the technical capacity to carry out this type of procedure, and in the United States, around 30 interventions of this type have been registered.

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