Donor biopsy in living donor liver transplantation: is it still relevant in a developing country?

Liver transplantation is an important modality of treatment for end-stage liver disease. Liver biopsy evaluation has been an important aspect of the donor evaluation protocol. With the advent of newer modalities of donor evaluation such as high resolution CT scan, fibroscan and NMR spectroscopy, the relevance of the liver biopsy appears to be diminishing. We investigated the usefulness of donor liver biopsy evaluation in patients who had been cleared by radiological investigations. We evaluated 184 donor liver biopsies performed over a one-year period and found that 18% showed >5% steatosis and around 40% showed portal inflammation, which was, however, minimal to mild. Fibrosis was detected in 10 cases (5.4%), 7 being in stage 1 and 3 in stage 2. Donors with these findings were not considered for transplantation. We conclude that the liver biopsy still continues to be relevant especially in a developing country and does add additional information to the diagnostic work-up of a liver donor.