Author: Colleen Jay, MD, MSCI, FACS

Learning Objectives:

1. Review the pathophysiology and consequences of brain death.
2. Provide updated evidence-based guidelines for medical management of potential donors.
3. Touch on organ donor evaluation and allocation considerations.
4. Understand the pathophysiology of ischemia reperfusion injury and review the basics of common preservation fluids.

Unit Objectives

I. Understand the moral, ethical and legal issues and steps involved in determining brain death.
II. Understand the moral, ethical and legal issues and steps involved in live organ donation.
III. Describe the basic assessment of the medical, laboratory, and anatomic characteristics of a potential organ donor (live or deceased), the quality of a donor organ, and its suitability for a given recipient.
IV. Outline in detail the procedure to safely recover abdominal organs from deceased donors, including those for donation after cardiac death (DCD).
V. Understand the recovery processes for living donor organs and describe the steps necessary to perform relevant organ specific recovery (liver, kidney, or pancreas).
VI. Outline the basic principles and limits of organ preservation and be familiar with organ preservation techniques, including pulsatile perfusion.

Organ Recovery Unit

Author: Kelley M.K. Hitchman, MS, PhD, F(ACHI)

Learning Objectives:

1. Review the history and evolution of diagnostic criteria for antibody mediated rejection (AMR).
2. Describe mechanisms in which mismatched donor HLA antigens can cause and contribute to AMR.
3. Explain the components and process of performing a virtual crossmatch, as well as how it is applied as a specialized immunologic risk assessment for transplant pairs.
4. Summarize different timings and manifestations of AMR.
5. Understand how HLA-DSA detection can correlate with rejection and how anti-HLA antibody testing can help inform desensitization.

Author: Kelley M.K. Hitchman, MS, PhD, F(ACHI)

Learning Objectives:

1. List key genes of the Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC) encoding for HLA molecules and describe MHC inheritance.
2. Summarize MHC and HLA polymorphism, HLA molecule expression and HLA molecule functions.
3. Appraise the role of HLA molecules and peptides in transplantation.
4. Describe test methods utilized by clinical histocompatibility & immunogenetics laboratories for the purposes of HLA typing and anti-HLA antibody detection/identification, as well as the clinical applications of such HLA data.

Immunobiology and Pharmacology Unit

Author: Shaheed Merani, MD, PhD, FRCSC, FACS

Learning Objectives:

1. Differentiate between the anatomical configurations and surgical components of isolated intestinal, combined liver-intestinal, and multivisceral transplants.
2. Evaluate clinical indications and patient-specific factors (e.g., severity of IFALD, vascular patency) to determine the most appropriate graft type.
3. Describe the critical technical steps of the recipient operation, with a focus on vascular inflow/outflow strategies and the restoration of enteric continuity.
4. Formulate management strategies for complex surgical challenges.

Intestinal Transplantation Unit

In this webinar, Dr. Adeel Khan will focus on addressing the operative nuances and technical challenges of the procedure in infants. This session will be facilitated through a video-based case presentation of a living donor liver transplant using a segment 2/3 graft performed in a 2-year-old girl with biliary atresia.

Author: Garrett Roll, MD, FACS

Learning Objectives:

1. How does advanced preservation influence outcomes
2. Understand the different  types of advanced preservation, focusing on NMP
3. Results from the landmark clinical trials, and understand why they need to be interpreted in context
4. Results from emerging post approval, real-world data
5. Consider our biggest challenges