The experimental liver transplant was performed for the first time in our country by Vladimir Fluture in Timișoara and Sergiu Duca in Cluj. Dumitru Popescu-Fălticeni performed animal liver preservation studies at the Floreasca Emergency Hospital in Bucharest. In the Fundeni Surgical Clinic, concerns for this procedure began in the 80s, when, at the urging of Professor Dan Setlacec, Irinel Popescu began to perform experimental operations to master the operative technique. In Romania, the first human liver transplant was performed by the team led by Irinel Popescu on June 21, 1997, but the patient died in the postoperative period [54]. Until the year 2000, three more transplant operations were performed [51], without the patients surviving.
The first transplant followed by patient survival was performed on April 15, 2000 [55], by the same team, which included Dr. A. Slim, a collaborator of Professor Domenico Forti from the Niguarda Hospital in Milan. The patient suffered from cirrhosis of the liver caused by hepatitis B virus. The liver transplant patient is alive more than 14 years after the operation, in very good condition. In the fall of 2000, the first transplant from a living donor (from mother to daughter) was performed, the indication being biliary atresia. The operation was carried out under the direction of Professor Cristoph Broelsch from the University of Essen [52].
Next, the whole liver operations, from a cadaver donor, were performed entirely by the team led by Irinel Popescu, while in the operations from a living donor, both in children and in adults, the collaboration with Professor Broelsch and Dr. .Massimo Malago continued over several years. In 2001, the team from Fundeni successfully performed the first “domino” transplant in Romania in a patient with familial hypercholesterolemia [56]. After 2006, he started a collaboration with the team of Professor S.G. Lee from Seoul where several members of the Fundeni Liver Transplant and General Surgery Center specialized in living donor liver transplantation. Following the technical changes brought to the liver transplant procedure with the right hemified from an adult, the number of these procedures has increased and the results have improved. In 2011, a first for Romania, a split liver transplant was performed for two adults and a dual transplant from two living donors. Between 2000 and 2006, the number of transplant operations did not exceed 20 procedures per year.
Since 2007, however, as a result of the establishment of the National Transplant Agency, the number of these operations began to increase reaching [57] 624 at the end of 2014, the year in which 105 transplants were performed in the Fundeni Clinical Institute, of which 15 to living donor. Also in the same year, a new liver transplant center is established within the “Sfânta Maria” Hospital in Bucharest. Thus, the total number of transplants in 2014 amounted to 122. Also, in 2016, a regional liver transplant center was opened in Iasi, within the “St. Spiridon” Hospital.