Quick answer
A 42-year-old woman in Tashkent received part of her 19-year-old son's liver on 11 October 2026, in what Uzbekistan's doctors and Renji Hospital in Shanghai describe as the country's first minimally invasive living-donor liver transplant. The operation was led by Xia Qiang, president of Renji Hospital, working with surgeons at the V. Vakhidov Surgical Centre [1][2]. The donor's incision was kept under 8 centimetres, against the open operation previously standard for adult living donation in the country [1].
Key takeaways
- Renji Hospital's team, led by Xia Qiang, worked with surgeons at the V. Vakhidov Surgical Centre in Tashkent on 11 October 2026 during a technical-assistance visit from 10 to 14 October [1][2].
- The recipient had acute-on-chronic liver failure, a condition reported to carry 30–50% mortality once several organs begin to fail [1].
- The liver came from her 19-year-old son. The donor operation was done laparoscopically rather than open, with the incision kept below 8 cm [1].
- Renji and the Vakhidov centre signed a memorandum covering staff training, joint case review, and peri-operative and long-term follow-up [2].
- This is one reported operation, not a comparison study: it shows the technique can be transferred, not that it is safer than open surgery [1].
The condition in context: why living donors carry so much of the load
Liver failure is what happens when the liver can no longer do its jobs — clearing toxins, making clotting factors, processing food. Cirrhosis, viral hepatitis, alcohol and liver cancer are the common routes to it. Once the liver has failed, a transplant is the only treatment that replaces the organ.
The demand far exceeds the supply of organs from deceased donors almost everywhere. In 2022 there were an estimated 866,000 new cases of liver cancer worldwide and 759,000 deaths from it; China alone accounted for 368,000 new cases and 317,000 deaths, with an age-standardised incidence rate of 15.0 per 100,000 against a global 8.6 [3]. Liver cancer is only part of the transplant caseload, but it is a large part of why the queue is long.
| Region | What the data shows | Source |
|---|---|---|
| China | 368,000 new liver cancer cases and 317,000 deaths in 2022 — roughly 42% of the world's liver cancer cases. About 80% of transplanted organs come from deceased donors. | GLOBOCAN 2022 analysis, Chinese Journal of Oncology 2025 [3]; deceased-donor share quoted by Vietnam's national transplant coordinator [5] |
| United States | A record 11,458 liver transplants in 2024 (10,886 adults, 572 children). Some 24,376 candidates were on the waiting list at some point during the year and 9,130 were still waiting on 31 December; 12,174 livers from deceased donors were used. | Chinese summary of Kwong AJ et al., OPTN/SRTR 2024 Annual Data Report: Liver, American Journal of Transplantation 2026;26(8S1):S214 [4] |
| Southeast Asia | Vietnam leads the region with more than 1,000 transplants a year across 31 licensed hospitals, but over 80% come from living donors because brain-dead donation is only about 20% — against roughly 60% in Thailand. Cumulative liver transplants there: 754. | Sài Gòn Giải Phóng, reported at the VIO DTC 2026 conference, 10 January 2026 [5] |
| Europe | Across the eight Eurotransplant countries, 13,570 patients were still active on transplant waiting lists at the end of 2024, after 7,150 organs from 2,181 deceased donors were allocated during the year. | Eurotransplant preliminary 2024 figures [6] |
These figures count different things — cancer incidence, transplants performed, waiting lists — so read them as different views of one problem. The relevant point for this story is the Southeast Asian one: where fewer than a fifth of transplants come from deceased donors, a living donor is usually the only option, and the operation has to be safe for two people rather than one [5].
What happened
Xia Qiang — a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and president of Renji Hospital, which is affiliated to Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine — led a team to Uzbekistan from 10 to 14 October 2026 for a medical technical-assistance visit [1][2].
The team covered liver surgery, anaesthesiology and intensive care, and Renji says it deliberately staffed the whole chain: the recipient operation, laparoscopic removal of the graft, microsurgical connection of the hepatic artery, anaesthesia, intensive care and specialist nursing [2]. On the evening of 10 October, shortly after landing in Tashkent, the group went to the Vakhidov centre to assess the patient and check the operating theatre and supporting facilities before planning the next day's operation [2].
On the morning of 11 October the joint team completed the transplant with the Uzbek surgeons Saidmurod Ismoilov and Fazliddin Bakhritdinov. Renji described it as the country's first minimally invasive living-donor liver transplant [1][2].
During the visit the two institutions signed a cooperation memorandum: training for clinical staff, joint discussion of difficult transplant cases, exchange of experience on peri-operative management and long-term follow-up, and research collaboration on paediatric transplantation, donor safety and long-term outcomes [2]. This is not Renji's first overseas programme of this kind — in 2019 Xia Qiang's team went to Kuala Lumpur to help the University of Malaya hospital perform what were described as Malaysia's first paediatric living-donor liver transplants [2].
In a living-donor liver transplant, a healthy person gives part of their liver. The usual operation to remove that piece is open surgery with a long abdominal incision. In the keyhole version, the graft is removed laparoscopically — through several small ports and one short incision, here kept under 8 cm — which is intended to reduce trauma and speed the donor's recovery. The recipient operation itself is still a major open transplant. The liver regenerates in both people over the following weeks [1].
The case as reported
The details below come from the Chinese-language reports of Renji Hospital and Shanghai media; they are the hospitals' account, not an independent review.
The patient, named in the reports as Dilnosa, was 42 and from Namangan region in eastern Uzbekistan. She noticed a swelling on the left side of her abdomen together with jaundice — yellowing of the skin and eyes — and was referred to the Vakhidov centre in Tashkent with severely impaired liver function. She was diagnosed with acute-on-chronic liver failure [2].
Her 19-year-old son Sadobek was the donor. After the operation she was reported to have stable vital signs and recovering indicators, and her family sent a thank-you letter in Chinese to the Renji team through the Uzbek doctors [1][2]. No follow-up data beyond the immediate post-operative period has been published.
Why it matters for people considering care in China
| What it tells you | What it does not tell you |
|---|---|
| Renji has a liver transplant programme experienced enough to export its technique and training abroad, including to a national first [1][2]. | Nothing about outcomes: no survival figures or complication rates for this technique were published. |
| Donor safety is treated as a formal priority, with pre-operative assessment and a multidisciplinary team as the stated method [2]. | Whether minimally invasive donor surgery is offered routinely, or only in selected cases. |
| China now performs a large share of its transplants from deceased donors — roughly 80% by one international comparison [5]. | Whether a non-resident can enter the national allocation system, and on what terms. |
Availability and limits
- One operation, one country. This is a single case reported by the hospitals involved and by Chinese state-affiliated media. It is not a trial and not a comparison with open donor surgery.
- No published outcomes. Beyond "stable vital signs" immediately after surgery, no survival, complication or recovery figures have been released for this patient or donor.
- The technique is not universally available. Laparoscopic donor hepatectomy needs specific expertise and equipment; most centres doing living-donor transplants still use open surgery for the donor.
- Living donation needs a suitable donor. A healthy, compatible, consenting adult is required, and the donor takes real surgical risk.
- Access for international patients is not stated. None of the sources we read says whether Renji accepts non-resident liver transplant patients. Ask the hospital directly, and ask how allocation works.
What to ask before booking anything
| Question | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Do you accept patients who are not Chinese residents, and under what rules? | Nothing published answers this; it decides whether a plan is possible at all. |
| How does the national organ allocation system treat non-residents? | A deceased-donor transplant depends entirely on this. |
| If a living donor is needed, what is your assessment process for the donor? | Donor safety protocols are the part that varies most between centres. |
| Is the donor operation done laparoscopically here, and for whom? | The published case does not establish that it is routine. |
| Can you give a written estimate, and what does it include? | Published figures are list prices; your case is quoted individually. |
Questions patients ask
What is acute-on-chronic liver failure?
It is a sudden, severe worsening of liver function in someone who already has chronic liver disease. It can trigger failure of other organs, and mortality has been reported at 30–50% once that happens [1]. A transplant is often the only treatment that can reverse it.
Why use a living donor instead of a deceased donor?
Because deceased donor organs are scarce. In Vietnam, which leads Southeast Asia in transplant numbers, more than 80% of transplants come from living donors because brain-dead donation accounts for only about 20% [5]. A living donor also lets the operation be planned in advance.
Is keyhole surgery on the donor actually safer?
The reports say it reduces trauma and should help the donor recover faster, with the incision kept under 8 cm [1]. But no comparison data was published, so this case does not establish that it is safer than open donor surgery.
Can a foreigner have a liver transplant in China?
We could not find any published statement from Renji on this. Ask the hospital's international office directly, and separately ask how the national organ allocation system treats non-residents, because that determines whether a deceased-donor transplant is possible.
Does the donor's liver grow back?
Yes, in both people. The remaining liver regenerates over the following weeks, which is what makes partial-liver donation possible [1].