Liver transplantation in neonates

Orthotopic liver transplantation (OLT) has evolved over the past two decades to become the standard of care for end-stage liver disease in infants and children. Technical advances, particularly the use of technical variant allografts, have permitted extension of OLT into a much younger and smaller population than previously possible. Major centers around the world now routinely perform OLT in infants with survival success equivalent to that in older children and adults. We are beginning to see a small population of school-aged children who were infant OLT recipients. The further extension of OLT into neonates is more recent, with only a few pediatric centers reporting survival success. Very little is known about this frontier of transplantation. Our intent is to provide an overview of neonatal OLT using all available data and our experience in the field.