Pre-Transplant Services

The NYU Transplant Center provides various services designed to keep patients as healthy as possible between the time they are accepted for a transplant and the time the transplant occurs.

We closely follow all patients awaiting an organ transplant in our outpatient Transplant Clinic, in collaboration with their referring physician. During this phase, we periodically assess patients their candidacy for a donor organ and determine whether they need to be admitted for management of complications of their disease.

Patients who have hepatocellular carcinoma are candidates for chemoembolization. The goal of this therapy is to destroy the tumor before transplant, preventing it from spreading both pre- and postoperatively. In chemoembolization, chemotherapy is injected directly into the tumor during an angiogram, which is performed by our invasive radiologists and hematologists.

Patients with liver disease often experience portal hypertension, an increase in pressure within the vein that carries blood from the digestive organs to the liver. In response to this rise in pressure, large veins, called varices, sometimes develop across the esophagus and stomach. The varices tend to become fragile and prone to bleeding. Patients who have a variceal bleed are candidates for a TIPS procedure, in which a stent is placed in the liver. This decreases the blood pressure and blood flow to the esophageal varices, thus preventing bleeds.

View images of a TIPS procedure.

Patients with acute kidney failure can be placed on kidney dialysis, greatly extending their ability to survive until a suitable donor organ is found.