What's New
| June 2010 |
Dr. Kato Performs Successful Liver Transplant on two-Month-Old Infant Tomoaki Kato, MD | |
| June 2010 | Dr. Kato Featured in 2010 NY Magazine Best Doctors Issue The June 6, 2010 New York magazine Best Doctors issue included a profile of Tomoaki Kato, MD, featuring a multi-organ auto transplant he led to rid a 63- year-old woman of a baseball-sized leiomyosarcoma tumor on her abdominal aorta. The tumor was also wrapped around two other major arteries. The team temporarily removed the abdominal organs. In removing the tumor they excised four inches of vena cava and three inches of aorta, replacing the vessel tissue with grafts. The operation required seven surgeons and two anesthesiologists; the patient went home after three weeks in the hospital. | |
| June 2010 | Dr. Samstein and Laparoscopic Hepatectomy Featured on National TV Dr. Benjamin Samstein, a pioneer in minimally invasive liver donor surgery (hepatectomy), appeared on an ABC News Healthfirst segment on May 27, 2010. The segment profiled a father who donated a portion of his liver to his young child, who suffered from liver failure. Until recently, living donor hepatectomy involved a 25 centimeter incision extending from chest to navel. Newly introduced minimally invasive donor surgery involves several 1-inch incisions instead. The result is much less pain and recovery time for the donor. The procedure is a boon for living liver donors, who are often a parent donating a portion of their liver to their child—a parent who must care for the child immediately after surgery. The story was also covered nationally on CBS News. | |
| March 2010 | Video: The CLDT's Benjamin Samstein, MD, discusses surgery for liver cancer Dr. Samstein discusses "resection" (removing the diseased part of the liver), how much of the liver can be safely removed, and what challenges faces surgeons operating on the liver. | |
| February 2010 | Dr. Kato and Orthotopic Liver Transplantation Profiled in NYT The February 22, 2010 New York Times published an article about auxiliary partial orthotopic liver transplantation, in which a portion of a liver is transplanted into the body of a patient with liver failure, usually a child, and the patient's own (native) liver is retained in place. The transplanted liver supports the patient until the native liver recovers, and immune-suppressing drugs to protect the transplant from the patient's immune system are administered. Once the native liver recovers, immunosuppression is stopped and the transplant liver is attacked and absorbed by the immune system. The great benefit of the procedure is that the patient must only take immunosuppressant drugs until their own liver recovers, although not all cases of acute liver failure do recover, and those patients rely on their transplanted liver and require immunosuppression for life. The Times article focused on the case of NYPH/Columbia Patient Jonathan Nuņez, whose liver failed at when he was eight months old. Tomoaki Kato, MD, then at University of Miami/Jackson Memorial Hospital, performed auxiliary partial orthotopic liver transplantation surgery on Jonathan in 2006. Jonathan is now a healthy four-year-old, who is immunosuppressant free. Dr. Kato, who came to Columbia's Center for Liver Disease and Transplantation in 2008, was highlighted in the article as one of the few surgeons who perform the lengthy and complex procedure. | |
| February 2010 | Exclusively at NewYork-Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital Laparoscopic Approach Promises Dramatically Improved Recovery for the Organ Donor — Typically, a Parent Donating to Their Child The laparoscopic liver retrieval is offered by Dr. Benjamin Samstein, Surgical Director of the Living Donor Liver Transplant Program, who first learned the technique from Daniel Cherqui of Hôpital Henri Mondor, Paris. Standard pediatric liver implantation is led by Dr. Tomoaki Kato, Surgical Director, Liver and Gastrointestinal Transplantation. The new surgical advance represents the latest chapter in a history of innovations in living organ donation by NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia surgeons. Dr. Jean Emond, chief of transplantation, was a key member of the team that performed the first pediatric living donor liver transplantation in North America in 1989 while at the University of Chicago Medical Center. Dr. Lloyd Ratner, director of renal and pancreatic transplantation, performed the nation's first adult-to-adult laparoscopic living donor kidney transplant in 1995 while at Johns Hopkins Medical Center. Today more than half of kidney transplants are done with a living donor, and 80 percent of these are retrieved laparoscopically. Read more about living donor liver retrieval and living organ transplantation at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center. | |
| February 2010 | Dr. James Guarrera Is PI in First-of-Its-Kind Liver Preservation Study Machine Perfusion Outperforms Standard Cold-Storage Liver Preservation  James V. Guarrera, MD | |
| January 2010 | Brooklyn Woman on Brink of Death Thrives After Five Transplants At the turn of the 2010 New Year, Fox News and the New York Daily News reported on the promising recovery of a patient who received an unprecedented five-organ transplant in May 2009. The procedure was performed by a Columbia surgical team headed by Dr. Tomoaki Kato. The 22-year-old patient, Kristin Molini, was near death from a rare medical condition known as intestinal dysmotility when she received a new liver, stomach, pancreas, and large and small intestines in a 13-hour operation. The Columbia surgical team included three surgeons, two anesthesiologists, and four nurses. According to the article, only 300 such surgeries have been performed worldwide since the 1980s. "It's still a very uncommon surgery," said Dr. Kato, "This is considered very high-risk." Media coverage for the multiple transplant included Fox News (December 31, 2009) and the New York Daily News (January 1, 2010). | |
| November 2009 | Multi-Organ Autotransplantation
Transplant surgeons at NYPH/Columbia use autotransplantation to remove deeply embedded tumors involving the abdominal blood vessels, which would otherwise be considered inoperable.
Autotransplantation is the removal and reimplantation of a patient's own organ (or organs).
Unlike patients who receive organs from donors, patients undergoing autotransplantation do not have to wait for a donor to become available.
They are not required to take immunosuppressant medications following surgery, as is the case with transplantation of donor organs. | |
| September 2009 | Multi-Organ Autotransplant Patient Starts Third Grade in Fine Shape On September 9, 2009, New York Newsday published a follow-up story about Heather McNamara, whose multiple-organ autotransplant and tumor removal was performed by Dr. Tomoaki Kato during February, 2009. Heather had lost her pancreas, stomach, and spleen, which were too damaged by her tumor to be reattached, leaving her diabetic, more prone to infections, and dependent upon pre-digested food for her nutrition. The article reported that the seven-year-old, who started third grade on September 8, looked and acted like a normal, healthy girl. Dr. Steven Lobritto, who was interviewed for the article, reported that her prognosis is good, "She's a robust kid," he said. "She's right on target." | |
| August 2009 | CLDT Emergency Liver Transplant Profiled by NYT The August 18, 2009 The New York Times profiled an emergency liver transplant in an American patient who became ill while traveling overseas. The procedure, which faced tremendous odds, was coordinated and performed by the Center for Liver Disease and Transplantation (CLDT). | |
| June 2009 |  Robert S. Brown, Jr., MD | |
| June 2009 | NYP/Columbia Offers Artificial Liver Device as Part of Ongoing Trial The Extracorporeal Liver Assist Device, or ELAD®, is the first artificial organ for liver patients that uses immortalized human liver cells. The Center for Liver Disease and Transplantation (CLDT) at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center is one of a few centers in the U.S. offering the device. The bedside system treats blood plasma, metabolizing toxins and synthesizing proteins just like a real liver does. The study is evaluating the effectiveness of the system in supporting patients' lives until a liver transplant becomes available. "We're also interested to see if it can relieve the burden on the patient's liver enough so that it can regenerate and regain some of its function," says Robert S. Brown, Jr., MD, MPH, site principal investigator. Read more. | |
| March 2009 | In March, 2009, Dr. Robert S. Brown, Jr. was the featured expert in a news story on the extracorporeal liver-assist device (ELAD). He noted that, unlike previous attempts at an artificial liver, the ELAD uses human liver cells to metabolize toxins and synthesize proteins. The interview has aired on eight ABC and NBC affiliate stations across the country. | |
| February 2009 | Dr. Kato Leads Historic Surgery Resulting in Successful Removal of "Inoperable" Abdominal Tumor Removing a tumor from a 7-year-old girl's abdomen during a 23-hour surgery on February 6, 2009, Tomoaki Kato, MD, and a team of seven surgeons and eight additional clinicians removed multiple organs from the girl's abdomen. The team removed small and large intestines, liver, pancreas, spleen and stomach, while three separate surgical teams worked to excise the tennis ball-sized tumor, which was tangled around vital organs and essential blood vessels. After removing the tumor, the team re-implanted the liver, small and large intestines. However, the girl's pancreas, spleen and stomach — non-vital organs that had been compromised by the tumor — were unsuitable for re-implantation. The surgery is the first reported case of its kind in the world. The story was covered by New York Newsday, CNN TV, WCBS TV, NY1 TV, and 1010 WINS radio New York. Read more. | |
| December 2008 | Liver Transplant Milestone Celebrated
WABC-TV and WCBS Radio both interviewed Dr. Emond, who discussed how advances like living organ transplantation have helped save lives. ABCNews.com and HealthNewsDigest.com also reported on the event. Read the NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital press release. | |
| April 2008 | New Life for Children with Liver Failure
If a child suffers from a serious liver disorder, treatment by a multidisciplinary center with vast medical and surgical experience can make the difference between an excellent or poor quality of life, or between life and death.
At the NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia Center for Liver Disease and Transplantation, outcomes far surpass the national average, with 92% of children surviving at one year, 89% surviving at two years, and 88% surviving at three years after liver transplantation. But short-term survival is not the goal.
If a child lives only one or two years, that is not a successful transplant. Our goal is for every child to live a normal life well into adulthood. | |
| April 2008 | Preventing and Treating Adult Liver Disease
The Center for Liver Disease and Transplantation offers a full spectrum of services to patients suffering from all forms of liver disease, from walk-in office consultations, to antiviral treatment for Hepatitis C and Hepatitis B, to liver transplantation.
In a trend that reflects the rising obesity epidemic, physicians at the center are seeing increasing numbers of patients with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, a condition associated with obesity.
While non-alcoholic fatty liver disease is clearly on the rise, undetected viral hepatitis C infection accounts for about 50% of the center's patients with chronic liver disease.
Alcoholism accounts for the next largest group of patients at the center, which is noted for its comprehensive, multidisciplinary treatment program. | |
| March 2008 | On March 27, Fox Business ran a Schering-Plough Corporation press release regarding the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval of label revisions for peginterferon alfa-2b and ribavirin, as a combination therapy for chronic hepatitis C. Robert S. Brown Jr., MD, MPH, was co-principal investigator in the study leading to the label revision, WIN-R. The release was picked up by the Biloxi Sun Herald, and CNN/Money. | |
| November 2007 | Robert S. Brown, Jr., MD, provided comments for a November 14, 2007 New York Times article about four transplant recipients in Chicago who contracted H.I.V. from an organ donor, the first known cases in more than a decade of the virus being spread by organ transplants. The organs also gave all four patients hepatitis C, in the first reported instance of the two viruses being spread simultaneously by a transplant. "It still remains that the biggest risk for patients on the transplant list is being on the list and not receiving an organ," Dr. Brown said, "there is always a drive toward better testing, but if it leads to more organ wastage, we'll probably hurt more people than we help...what I tell my patients is, the likelihood of being infected with HIV or hepatitis in that small window of time is incredibly small, and the risk of dying on the waiting list is not incredibly small." The story was picked up by the Akron Beacon Journal. | |
| 2007 | Multimodality Approach Improves Outcomes in Hepatocellular Carcinoma With nationally and internationally recognized authorities in established modalities as well as experimental techniques, the treatment team for hepatocellular carcinoma and hilar cholangiocarcinoma at the Center for Liver Disease and Transplantation at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center is setting new standards for patient outcomes—including long-term survival—in resection, adjuvant therapies, and transplantation. | |
| 2007 | New Drugs, Dosing Highlight New Approaches to Hepatitis C The Center for the Study of Hepatitis continues to be actively involved in both clinical and basic science research in an effort to identify new treatments for patients infected with the hepatitis C virus (HCV). A multidisciplinary approach is central to efforts at the Center, which is a collaborative endeavor of Weill Cornell clinicians and researchers at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital along with colleagues at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center and researchers at Rockefeller University. | |
| 2007 | Liver Transplantation: Better Preservation of Donor Organs May Enable More Transplants As advanced as the field of organ transplantation has become, several important challenges remain. Of these, the availability of donor organs stands paramount. Among those with end stage liver disease, over 17,000 patients wait for a donated liver every year in the U.S., but fewer than 6000 receive one, and about 1800 people die while on the waiting list. As a result, researchers are avidly working to find ways to safely use as many potential donor organs as possible, including organs that once may have been considered "imperfect." | |
| 2006 | Living Donor Liver Transplantation Saves Lives
| |
| May 2006 | Largest U.S. Hepatitis C Trial Provides Insight into Optimizing Treatment for Patients Dr. Robert Brown is Co-Principal Investigator of the WIN-R trial, the largest hepatitis C study ever conducted in U.S. patients. The community-based study which involved more than 4,900 patients at 225 centers across the United States, showed significantly better outcomes with weight-based dosing. The study findings were reported at the Digestive Diseases Week (DDW) annual meeting, May 20-25, 2006, at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Dr. Brown and the study's Principal Investigator, Dr. Ira Jacobson of Weill Medical College of Cornell University, are co-directors of New York-Presbyterian Healthcare System's Liver Clinical Trials Network (LCTN). Click here to read the press release on study presentation at the Digestive Diseases Week. | |
| February 2003 | Dr. Brown Presents First Data on Living Donor Liver Transplant Procedure shown to be safe for donors and recipients Robert S. Brown, Jr., MD, MPH is the principal author of an article entitled "A Survey of Liver Transplantation from Living Adult Donors in the United States," published as a Special Article in the February 27, 2003 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. The article is the first to present comprehensive data on adult to adult living donor liver transplantation (LDLT) in this country, with responses from 84 of the 122 programs now doing LDLT. Those 84 centers performed more than 90 percent of all cadaveric liver transplants (transplants that use organs harvested from someone who has died) in the U.S. in 1999 and 2000. Columbia University Medical Center has one of the nation's most active and outstanding living donor liver transplant programs. |
At this time there are eight patients on the waiting list for every available liver — and many patients are considered too sick or too old to even get a place on the list.
To address this serious shortage, the Center for Liver Disease and Transplantation (CLDT) is pioneering methods of increasing access to liver transplantation.
Living donor liver transplantation offers one solution.
