Minimally invasive surgery played a crucial role in modern medicine. With advantages such as less trauma, precise operation, minimal bleeding, and rapid postoperative recovery, minimally invasive procedures had been increasingly applied in the field of liver transplantation in recent years. This included techniques such as small incision living donor hepatectomy through an upper abdominal midline incision, laparoscopic-assisted living donor hepatectomy, pure laparoscopic living donor hepatectomy, and robotic living donor hepatectomy. Since Professor Cherqui from France firstly reported the total laparoscopic left lateral sectionectomy in living donors in 2002, the application of minimally invasive technology in living donor liver transplantation had become increasingly widespread. Based on this, so as to guide the more standardized, effective, and safe implementation of minimally invasive liver donor hepatectomy across the country, in August 2023, the Branch of Organ Transplant of Chinese Medical Association and the Branch of Organ Transplant Physicians of Chinese Medical Doctor Association organized national liver transplantation experts to jointly formulate the “Chinese guidelines for minimally invasive surgical techniques in living donor liver transplantation (2024 edition)”. This is to provide scientific guidance and reference for surgeons performing minimally invasive surgery on living liver donors in China.
Objective To explore the pathological features of rejection reaction and whether it accord with antibody-mediated rejection (AMR) in the liver transplantation model of allo-sensitized rat. Methods Twelve male Lewis rats as the recipient, 250–290 g; 6 male Brown Norway (BN) rats as the donor, 250–280 g. Twelve Lewis recipient rats were randomly divided into 4 groups by random number method (n=3): Lewis control group (LC group, without any treatment), direct transplantation group (T group, livers from BN rats were directly transplanted into Lewis rats), sensitized group (S group, spleen lymphocytes from BN rats were injected into Lewis rats), and sensitized transplantation group (TS group, splenic lymphocytes from BN rats were injected into Lewis rats for 2 weeks before liver transplantation). On the 14th day after liver transplantation, 3–4 mL of recipient non-lethal blood was collected to detect serum aspartate aminotransferase (AST), alanine aminotransferase (ALT), total bilirubin (TB), alkaline phosphatase (ALP) and creatinine (CRE) levels, and detect the expression of donor-specific alloantibody (DSA) and complement C4d in recipients. Hematoxylin-eosin (HE) staining and Masson staining were used to evaluate the morphological indexes of rat liver tissue, and CK-19, C4d and CD20 immunohistochemical staining methods were used to evaluate the degree of liver rejection and rejection activity index (RAI) score was performed. ResultsCompared with the T group, the serum AST, TB, and ALP levels, as well as the positive rates of DSA (IgG1, IgG2a, IgG2b, IgG2c) and C4d expression in Lewis rats in the TS group increased. Compared with the LC group, rats in the T group showed partial bile duct edema and lymphocyte infiltration, but no obvious damage of capillary structure was observed. Compared with the T group, a large number of lymphocytes or monocytes were infiltrated and capillaries were severely damaged in the anterior bile duct of rats in the TS group. The RAI and C4d scores of the TS group were higher than those of the T group. Conclusions More severe acute rejection and liver dysfunction occurred after liver transplantation in sensitized rats, and the acute rejection in sensitized rats was consistent with the characteristics of AMR. However, due to the small sample size in this study, further exploration of AMR model remains to be done.
Liver transplantation plays a pivotal role in the field of treating end-stage liver diseases. It is currently the only treatment method that can effectively save patients’ lives and has been fully verified as effective in clinical practice. However, the problem of postoperative infection has become one of the key factors impeding the favorable prognosis of patients. Among them, donor-derived infections, due to their uniqueness and complexity, are gradually becoming a research hotspot in both clinical and scientific research fields. Through a systematic and comprehensive analysis of a large number of existing studies, we deeply analyzed the overall current situation of infections after liver transplantation, clarified the specific types of donor-derived infections and their respective characteristics. On this basis, the potential risks of such infections were thoroughly explored, and preventive strategies such as the prophylactic use of antibiotics and vaccination were put forward in a targeted manner, aiming to improve the prognosis of patients after liver transplantation to the greatest extent and enhance the quality of life of patients.
