Mayo Clinic Children's provides comprehensive, multidisciplinary care for children with liver disease across all stages, including advanced liver disease and pediatric liver transplantation. The program brings together pediatric hepatology, transplant surgery and specialty care to support children with complex medical needs and optimize long?term outcomes.
In this video Samar H. Ibrahim, M.B., Ch.B. , and Julie K. Heimbach, M.D. , describe how Mayo Clinic Children's evaluates children with chronic liver disease, supports families and collaborates with referring physicians.
The Children's Center here at Mayo Clinic, I think, is uniquely positioned to provide expert care for children with advanced liver disease because we are not just a transplant program. We have all the programs that the patient might need. So if they have more complicated heart problems, we're also able to get pediatric cardiology involved. We're directly integrated with our adult programs. So when the child is reaching adolescence and adulthood, we can easily transition their care. I think any pediatric patient with a chronic liver condition who would like a second opinion or who would like to be considered for a liver transplant can be referred to Mayo Clinic because this is a way to have this like objective assessment, the therapeutic option available, the long term option available. I would say don't hesitate to contact us if you have a concern about a patient having a chronic condition that. To be evaluated because we care for patients across different stages of liver disease, so we can always help them early on in the process. For a child that needs a liver transplant, this is obviously a very highly specialized, uh, condition, and we know that the patient is going to be with us for the time where they need their transplant and we're going to be partnering for the long term in the care of that patient so that their outcome following transplant. That can be optimal. We really value that trust, uh, and that ability to work with the patient's referring team, not only their gastroenterologist, but also their primary care doctors. The referring provider is like a very essential member of the team because the outcome of the patient depends on the referring provider. We strive to engage them early on in the process and we try to touch base with them when the. Family is ready to go back home, so we try to, you know, connect them as much as possible, provide what we can provide and support them through the journey. We're able to provide both a living donor liver transplant option and deceased donor liver transplant option, split liver, really getting to optimize that child's opportunity to be transplanted at at a time that's right for them so we really can manage the full spectrum of their disease. So, I think we've really made significant progress in how to best manage that patient on the waiting list so that, that we can ensure that they are still meeting all of their growth milestones, making sure that their nutrition is optimized. Our team is really a multidisciplinary team together with our pediatric hepatologists and our transplant, uh, surgeons, we work together to manage the patient and pick the best time for that patient to proceed to transplant. At the end of the day, we care for the patient. The patient is the center of everything we do in this institution, and we continue to have this collegial relationship with the center and manage the patient together because we patients feel much better to have someone who's knowledgeable about their condition in their hometown or home city.
