End-to-end portocaval shunt for venous drainage of the native foregut in combined liver-intestinal transplantation

An end-to-side portocaval shunt has been classically described as the standard procedure that needs to be performed to obtain adequate venous drainage of the foregut in combined liver-intestinal transplant. The transplanted organs are placed en bloc in a piggyback fashion on the recipient's vena cava, and graft's porto-mesenteric venous circulation is left intact. Recurrent portal hypertension with hemorrhage has been reported as a complication after such a procedure. In an effort to improve the technical aspects of this complex operation, we began to perform an end-to-end shunt from the recipient portal vein to the infrahepatic donor cava. Here, we describe this new surgical technique and discuss its potential advantages. The new technique is described in detail. Of the 70 intestinal transplants performed in 67 patients at The Mount Sinai Hospital from 1998 to December 2004, three were multivisceral transplants (MVTx) and 28 were combined liver intestine transplants (LITx), post-surgical outcome including recurrent portal hypertension and the presence of splenomegaly and significant thrombocytopenia was retrospectively review between the group that received the classic end-side vs. the new end-end portocaval shunt. Of the 28 LITx, 23 were done with the classic end-side portocaval shunt and in five (one adult, four pediatric) the end-to-end portocaval shunt described in the present study. One patient in this group died on post-operative day 31 (adult); after a mean follow up of 19.5 months there is a 100% patient and graft survival for the pediatric population. Post-operatively there have been no complications related to this technique. Few modifications have been made to the original description of MVTx. This is the first description of this technique that is relatively simple to perform, creating a large vascular conduit with high flow rates and theoretically less turbulence compared with the end-to-side shunt.