The entrance of the French Hospital of the Levant on Sept. 5, 2025. (Credit: Philippe Hage Boutros/L'OLJ)
Officials from the French Levant Hospital in Sin al-Fil and the University Hospital Center of Montpellier announced Friday that they had carried out Lebanon’s first attempt at a relatively new liver transplant technique, as the two institutions renewed their cooperation protocol.
“This is a technique that has only existed for three or four years, and there have been only about 40 procedures, including two in France, according to published data,” Dr. Francis Navarro told L’Orient-Le Jour. Navarro heads the hepatobiliary surgery and liver and pancreas transplant unit at CHU Montpellier.
Working with Lebanese doctors Ali Shukur and Ahmad Abou Abbas and Brussels-based surgeon Laurent Coubeau, Navarro performed what is called a “rapid living donor” transplant on a 22-year-old patient, who received part of his father’s liver.
The details of the operation were presented alongside Antoine Maalouf, founder of the French Levant Hospital; Anne Ferrer, director general of CHU Montpellier; Didier Vendôme, French consul general; and Pierre Yared, president of the syndicate of hospital owners in Lebanon.
A partial transplant
“In a traditional living-donor transplant, a portion of the healthy donor’s liver is removed and grafted onto the recipient, from whom a large part of the diseased liver is removed. What we did 48 hours ago was remove part of the healthy left lobe from the donor, take out only part of the recipient’s diseased liver, and then graft the healthy liver segment,” Navarro explained.
“By keeping a portion of the patient’s native liver, we reduce the risk of liver failure, which allows the patient to live longer with a diseased liver. Meanwhile, the transplanted liver regenerates — recovering 20 to 30 percent of its volume. Ideally, that would allow us to remove the remaining diseased liver in two or three weeks,” he said.
The term “rapid” does not refer to the operation time — it lasted 17 hours — but to the speed at which the grafted liver regenerates. Navarro cautioned, however, that the procedure still carries risks. “It remains a technique with a risk of complications, including death, about 10 percent, as with all liver transplants. But it offers an additional option for patients if no compatible organ is available.”
Hope for Lebanon’s patients
“This new technique opens major prospects for many patients, particularly in Lebanon, where the national organ donation program has been operating in survival mode while awaiting proper funding and staffing,” said Farida Younane, national coordinator of the National Organization for the Donation and Transplantation of Organs and Tissues (NOD-Lb). Created by decree in 1999, the agency manages the national waiting list and promotes awareness of organ donation.
“As of the end of August 2025, 35,100 people in Lebanon held a donor card, and we receive new registrations daily,” she added.
About 700 people in Lebanon are registered for organ transplants — including kidneys, liver, heart and lungs — 77 of them awaiting a liver transplant. But Younane noted that the 2019 financial crisis and ongoing security issues have made the agency’s work far more difficult and that the official list does not fully reflect the country’s real needs.
At the press conference, Shukur and Navarro stressed the shortage of healthy organs in Lebanon and the rarity of cadaveric donors, who agree to donate after death, compared to the number of patients in need. The challenge is especially acute for liver transplants, where the time window after a donor’s death is extremely short.
No substitute for the liver
“What is already difficult for any organ is even more so for the liver,” Navarro said. “When the liver is affected by an acute or serious chronic condition, transplantation is the only solution. It’s not like the heart or kidney, where there are temporary options like dialysis. There is no substitute treatment. The liver regulates blood sugar, homeostasis, clotting and many other functions. We have no machine capable of replicating all of these.”
Still, doctors continue to look for alternatives. In 2020, researchers from the Zurich-based Liver4Life project developed a machine that allowed a damaged liver to be preserved and treated outside the human body for several days before being transplanted into a cancer patient, who survived, according to news reports.
Qassem rejects cease-fire agreement reached in Washington, slams it as a 'capitulation'
Qaani: Minimum requirement for Lebanon is a return to pre-war lines