HERSHEY, Pa. — For those with diseases like hepatitis C or fatty liver disease, Penn State Hershey has offered the region comprehensive liver care — including the ability to do live donor transplants — for the past two years. Penn State Hershey Liver Center has been diagnosing and managing liver disease since evolving out of the hospital’s transplant program in October of 2013.
Dr. Thomas Riley, a hepatologist and medical director of the center, has seen many advances in liver care, especially for hepatitis C, since the beginning of the transplant program in the mid-1990s. The team slowly grew over the years, including the addition of Dr. Zakiyah Kadry, the center’s surgical director, in 2005.
Penn State Hershey has completed more than 300 transplants since the transplant program’s beginning and was the first in the area to complete a live donor liver transplant in 2008.
“We had the outer rim of a wheel in place before Dr. Kadry came,” Riley said. “We just needed to insert someone with her skill set in the middle to connect the spokes. Once that happened, things started rolling.”
The first living donor liver transplant was completed shortly after her arrival.
Learn more about the Penn State Hershey Liver Center in this Penn State Medicine article.