Eagan doctor donates liver in Mayo Clinic’s first paired chain transplant

New milestone for liver transplants at Mayo Clinic

A team of Mayo Clinic surgeons and four patients have reached a milestone in liver transplants. FOX 9's Tim Blotz has the story.

ROCHESTER, Minn. (FOX 9) - In a Mayo Clinic surgical room in August, the patient on the operating table did something remarkable.

"I donated a part of my liver to somebody I didn’t know," said Dr. Mike Broeker. "It’s not a common thing that people do."

In fact, Broeker may be one in a million. He’s a family doctor who’s seen many of his own patients struggle with kidney failure.

"One of my patients in particular had needed a living donor a few years ago, and that got me thinking about, well, I can’t do it right now, but someday I could," said Dr. Broeker about the start of his journey toward organ donation.

That someday soon happened when he donated one of his kidneys to someone he didn’t know. It’s a gift of life that made him what the organ donation community used to call an altruistic donor. Such a person is now more commonly called a non-directed donor, meaning their living donation is meant to go to the person who needs it most.

How it started

Broeker says he was first made aware of the possibility of becoming a living liver donor after watching a FOX 9 story on Ted Garding in February 2022. Garding had also donated one of his kidneys in a non-directed donation and felt so positive about the outcome of impacting another life, he then explored becoming a living liver donor as well.

His journey led him to the Mayo Clinic living liver transplant program where became a non-directed liver donor.

"That was the first time I actually became aware of living liver donation even as a thing," Dr. Broeker recalled after seeing the story.

How it works

The liver is the only human organ that has the ability to regenerate.

"We can divide the liver in half from the donor," said Dr. Timucin Taner, a liver transplant surgeon at Mayo Clinic. "That half liver is put into the recipient. That half in the recipient starts growing right away and becomes a full liver within about three to four weeks."

Likewise, what’s left of the liver in the donor also regenerates in the same length of time.

Dr. Taner says living liver transplantation was pioneered in Japan and Asia where there are cultural barriers to harvesting organs after a person has died. Western medicine has been much slower to adopting living liver donation, but more transplant hospitals and programs are performing the surgeries.

Why it matters

Broeker’s liver donation was part of Mayo Clinic’s first paired liver donation chain. Paired exchanges are now very common in kidney transplants at Mayo and other transplant centers around the world. A paired exchange happens when a family member is not a perfect organ donation for their loved one, but may be a match for someone else needing a transplant.

"And if they’re a good donor, despite that incompatibility, we can find another recipient who can use that piece of the liver and that second recipient’s donor who may not be a match for that recipient, may actually donate to the initial person," said Dr. Taner.

The end result of paired match donations is that they create the possibility of enabling more transplantations.

"In the United States, last year was a record year for liver transplantations," said Dr. Taner. "We did about 10,000 liver transplants. And of those, about 600 were from living donors, so we’re talking about 6% or so."

At Mayo Clinic, the percentage of living liver donors is about 10% of the 140-150 liver transplants each year.

After this surgery, the two recipients and the donors made full recoveries. Dr. Broeker, who trains for marathons, is even back to running again.

"I would do it again if I could," said Dr. Broeker.