Prospective Comprehensive Assessment of Quality of Life and Psychology After Donor Hepatectomy

Live donor liver transplantation (LDLT) has established itself as a treatment for end-stage liver disease but donor safety remains a major issue. It is the responsibility of the transplant team to restore donor's health, not only physical, but also mental, social and environmental. There is scarcity of long term longitudinal data on donor quality of life. Most of the studies are cross sectional which describe the quality of life at certain time point and do not take into account of changes that might occur over a period. It is more relevant in this scenario, as two persons from a family undergo surgery at the same time, which has a profound effect on family dynamics, and restoration towards normalcy goes hand in hand with adaptation to a new lifestyle. Another shortcoming of available literature is lack of uniform instruments which comprehensively measure the quality of life of live liver donors (LLDs). Standardized health related quality of life (HRQOL) instruments such as Short Form 36(SF 36) or World Health Organization quality of life Brief (WHOQOL-BREF) are not designed for LLDs. Moreover, there are several symptoms which might interfere with daily activities such as incision site problems , dyspepsia to name a few, but are not distressing enough to be reflected on quality of life scores .The aim of current study was to observe the attitude of donors pre transplant, quality of life over a period, satisfaction with the donation process, their assessment of the health care team, satisfaction with the consent process, and change in pattern of symptoms and cosmesis after surgery.