Orthotopic liver segment transplantation.

This paper describes a method of liver transplantation in which only one segment from a donor organ is used to replace one part of the recipient's own liver. The patient was a nine-year-old boy with Crigler-Najjar, a rare inborn error of metabolism, in which the enzyme needed to conjugate bile is absent. The technique of orthotopic liver segment replacement is described, and the possibilities of using this procedure to help patients with some other inherited metabolic disorders is discussed. When this paper was written, the procedure has been performed only once before, on an adult in the USA.