EXPERTS have revealed that they are ready to carry out the North-East’s first liver transplant involving a live donor.

Professor Derek Manas, head of the North-East’s liver, kidney and pancreas transplantation team, said he hoped that between five and ten transplants of this type could be carried out this year.

Prof Manas, who is in charge of the team at the Freeman Hospital, in Newcastle, which provides an organ transplant service for the region, said: “On January 1, we started offering live donor liver transplants.

We haven’t done one yet, but we are aiming to do between five and ten a year.”

NHS liver transplants usually rely on organs becoming available after a donor has died, but in this relatively new procedure, surgeons remove part of the liver of a healthy donor and transplant it into a patient with liver failure.

The remaining liver in the donor will regrow within weeks to almost its normal size.

About one in five liver patients currently die on the waiting list.

The UK’s first live donor liver transplant took place at St James, Hospital, in Leeds, in June 2007.

Doctors at the Freeman Hospital are marking the start of the programme at a public meeting at the hospital tonight where consultants from the Freeman and from Leeds, will give the public the facts about live donor transplantation.

Before people sign up to become donors they need to be aware that they have a one in 200 risk of dying on the operating table.

Prof Manas has carried out a number of live liver transplants in France and Germany and has assisted transplants in Leeds, and in Toronto, Canada.

Profesor Dieter Broering, from Hamburg, who is one of Europe’s leading experts in this field, is expected to assist surgeons at the Freeman.

Prof Manas said live donor liver transplants were more technically demanding than transplants from dead donors, but provided great benefits for the recipient.

Every year, about 120 people with liver failure are assessed for possible transplants at The Freeman, with up to 50 transplants carried out.

The hospital usually has about 30 patients waiting for liver donors at any one time.

The meeting starts at 7pm, in lecture theatre one.