Liver Transplant

Our mission is to provide outstanding clinical care to transplant patients and all patients with end-stage liver disease. 

We are proud to be an integral part of the liver transplant team at UCSF, one of the largest and most successful liver transplant programs in the country. Our team is also dedicated to excellence in teaching and is at the forefront of exciting clinical and translational research within transplantation. 

UCSF has a world class Transplant team with a distinctly robust and high-volume Liver Transplant service that includes a team of highly specialized nurses, nurse practitioners, social workers, hepatologists, intensivists, transplant surgeons and, liver transplant anesthesiologists. 

By the numbers

UCSF consistently exceeds the national average transplant rate with 180-200 transplants per year, including approximately 30 living donor liver transplants. We have the privilege of caring for some of the most medically complex, high acuity patients. 55% of our liver transplant recipients have MELD scores of 15 or greater and 30% of our recipients have MELD scores greater than 30. Despite the severity of illness of our transplant recipients, we have exceptional graft and patient outcomes, with a 93% recipient one-year survival with functioning graft and an 85% 3-year survival with functioning graft. 

UCSF has the second largest living donor liver transplant program in the United States. We take a multidisciplinary and comprehensive approach to the care of both donors and recipients that involves close collaboration between the transplant surgeons and liver transplant anesthesiologists. 

As part of the hepatobiliary service, the liver transplant anesthesia team also provides expert anesthetic care to patients undergoing hepatic resections and biliary reconstruction, as well as to those with end-stage liver disease undergoing other complex surgical procedures.