The Ministry of Health of Ukraine has approved the Standard of Medical Care "Liver Transplantation in Adults and Children" (MoH order No. 1115 dated 12 August 2026). The Standard defines unified approaches to the provision of medical care throughout the patient's entire pathway – from determining indications, preparation for transplantation, performance of the operation and subsequent follow-up.
Liver transplantation is performed in adults and children with severe acute or chronic liver diseases, when other treatment methods are absent, exhausted or do not provide an acceptable prognosis for survival and quality of life.
This concerns, in particular, patients with acute liver failure, cirrhosis of various origins, certain congenital, genetic, metabolic and oncological diseases. The decision on the appropriateness of transplantation is made by a multidisciplinary transplantation team, taking into account the patient's condition, the prognosis of the disease and the risk of postoperative complications.
The updated document contains detailed recommendations on the selection of recipients and donors, their examination and preparation for surgery, the performance of transplantation, postoperative management and lifelong follow-up. It also defines approaches to assessing patient priority, monitoring graft function, immunosuppressive therapy, prevention, early detection and treatment of complications, as well as the specifics of managing children after transplantation.
For the patient, this means a clear and consistent pathway of medical care and defined requirements for its quality at all stages. The standard provides for individual planning of treatment and further follow-up, regular monitoring of the patient's condition and the function of the transplanted liver, as well as timely detection of possible complications. This is important for the safety of the donor and recipient, preservation of graft function and long-term treatment outcomes.
The standard separately establishes indicators of the quality of medical care – 100-day and one-year survival of patients after liver transplantation.
Methodological support and information provision for the development of the standard were carried out by specialists of the State Expert Center of the Ministry of Health of Ukraine. This is one of the areas of the Center's work in the system of standardization of medical care – methodological support for the development of evidence-based approaches that should be applied in clinical practice.
The full text of the Standard of Medical Care "Liver Transplantation in Adults and Children" is available in the register of medical technological documents of the Center. https://www.dec.gov.ua/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/dn_1115_12082026_dod.pdf
