Liver

If you have end-stage liver disease, a liver transplant can bring hope. Thousands of patients have trusted their care to the experienced team at University of Florida Health Shands Transplant Center. Our center has over 20 years’ experience providing excellent care to patients with complex liver diseases.

Our team members from many specialties work together to provide you with the best care possible. While other centers may follow a liver transplant patient for several months after surgery, at UF Health, we follow our patients for life. Doing this leads to better outcomes and a higher rate of success with your transplanted organ.

The UF Health Difference

As a patient of UF Health Shands Transplant Center, you benefit from our three key features: experience, expertise, and excellence.

• Experience. We were one of the first liver transplant programs in the state of Florida — and we’ve continued to lead the field in transplant techniques. Our doctors – who are faculty in the University of Florida College of Medicine – are committed to focusing our knowledge and research on patients with advanced liver disease.
• Expertise. Our team has successfully transplanted more than 1,600 patients with end-stage liver disease. Our multidisciplinary approach to patient care draws on the combined expertise of our transplant physicians, transplant surgeons, nurse coordinators, transplant assistants, social workers, financial counselors, transplant pharmacists, immunogeneticists, anesthesiologists, intensivists and psychologists.
• Excellence. We take pride in our successful outcomes, and we are dedicated to transplanting livers as quickly as possible for those on our waiting list. After 12 months of being on our waiting list, 3.6 percent of patients died without a transplant, compared to the national average of 8.1 percent (Source: Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients).

Liver Transplant Services

Our liver transplant team provides you with a customized treatment plan. This means our team works closely together and with you to understand you, your liver condition and your treatment goals, enabling us to develop an optimal treatment plan based on your needs. The UF Health team closely follows you as you await transplant and following transplant, which helps to improve patient outcomes.

While waiting for an organ, you will receive a thorough yearly examination. This is because livers can become available quickly, and you need to be physically ready for surgery at short notice.

Liver Transplant Surgery

Your liver transplant surgery will last between four and eight hours. Following surgery, you will likely be in the intensive-care unit (ICU) for about two days, and then spend another eight to ten days in a regular hospital room, so we can provide close follow-up care after surgery to help monitor your medications and ensure you heal properly.

Jessica's Story

Learn More

View our program outcomes (PDF) on the SRTR website, as last reported in January 2019.

To learn more about our liver transplant services, contact (352) 265-0754.