Our highly skilled and experienced physicians, Dr. Amy Lu and Dr. Layal Abdel Rahman, specialize in performing kidney and liver transplants and hepatobiliary pancreatic surgery.

• Hepatobiliary disease—Hepatobiliary disease affects the liver, bile ducts or gallbladder and can be caused by viral, bacterial and parasitic infections, neoplasia, toxic chemicals, alcohol consumption, poor nutrition, metabolic disorders and cardiac failure. The two predominant diseases of the liver are viral hepatitis and cirrhosis, and the predominant chronic disease of the biliary system is cholelithiasis.
• Liver disease and failure—When a liver is damaged slowly over time, the condition is known as chronic liver disease. When it occurs rapidly, often in a matter of weeks, it is known as acute liver failure. Often, symptoms aren't evident until significant damage has been done. At present, there is no known way to medically compensate for the loss of a liver.
• Kidney and end-stage renal disease—End-stage renal disease occurs as a result of renal failure, or when the kidneys cannot effectively filter waste from the blood and are not able to regulate blood pressure and stimulate the production of red blood cells. This results in a buildup of toxic waste in the body.

• Kidney transplant surgery—A kidney transplant becomes necessary when kidney function declines and a patient develops end-stage renal disease. During the transplant surgery, which typically takes between two to four hours, the original kidneys are not removed from the body, and the donor kidney is surgically placed in the front area of the pelvis. Patients can expect a three- to seven-day hospital recovery period.
• Hepatobiliary pancreatic surgery—This complex surgical procedure treats benign and malignant diseases of the liver, pancreas, gallbladder and bile ducts.
• Liver transplant surgery—Liver transplantation replaces a severely diseased or irreversibly damaged liver with a healthy one. Most often, the new liver will come from a deceased donor. Liver transplants are reserved for the critically ill because the demand for available livers far outweighs the supply. Patients may spend many months waiting for a liver. Nationally, about 6,000 liver transplants are performed each year.

Patients can receive a kidney transplant from either a living or deceased donor. A donor match is carefully tested and screened through tests on blood type and tissue type. A crossmatch test is also performed to ensure the donor kidney does not carry any antibodies the recipient would negatively react to after the transplant surgery is completed.

We offer a number of webinars related to the procedures we perform, including information for living donors:

• Hepatobiliary
• Kidney
• Liver
• Living donor