About your donor

Before you are offered a liver from a deceased donor, a specialist nurse in organ donation will collect information on the donor’s health issues and lifestyle.

These specialist nurses are employed by NHS Blood and Transplant. They will go to the hospital where the donor is being cared for and speak to the donor’s friends and family and to the medical team looking after them.

The nurses will get as much information as possible about the donor, but time may be short.

Blood tests and some scans can be carried out on the donor. The blood tests will check the donor’s liver function and other organ function, and look for signs of infection in the blood.

Tests will be carried out to look for HIV, hepatitis B, and hepatitis C, as well as many other infections. These tests are very sensitive, but may be negative if the donor became infected just before their death.

The information on your donor will be passed to the liver transplant team looking after you.

You will be told if:

• Your donor had health problems that are likely to influence how long a donated liver might last after it is transplanted
• Your donor had any serious diseases that could affect you after the transplant

It is important to understand that all donated livers may carry a risk of passing on serious diseases such as cancer or infections such as hepatitis or HIV, though these risks are very small. There is no test that can reduce the risk of disease after organ transplantation to zero.

Yes. Some patients waiting for a liver would prefer not to be told information about the donor. Please tell your liver transplant team beforehand if you do not wish to be told any information about the deceased donor.

Your liver transplant team is not able to give you information that might allow you to identify the deceased donor, for instance through an internet search. It is important that we respect the confidentiality of the deceased donor and their family.