Sungkyunkwan University · Medicine
Professor Justin Sangwook Ko's research lab specializes in transplant surgery and hepatobiliary surgery, with a strong focus on improving outcomes in living donor liver transplantation. Key research directions include optimizing postoperative pain management in live donors, understanding the role of platelets and donor characteristics—such as sex and steatosis—in graft survival and hepatocellular carcinoma recurrence, and evaluating the impact of transfusions on patient outcomes. The lab integrates clinical research with translational insights to enhance donor safety and recipient long-term survival.
Figures are computed from collected data and may differ slightly.
The healthy condition of living donors makes their tolerance to pain particularly low, and clinicians are often challenged to come up with an analgesic technique that is effective yet ensures donor safety. This study compared, in donor right hepatectomy, the efficacy and safety of preoperative intrathecal morphine (ITM) combined with intravenous patient-controlled analgesia (IV-PCA) with IV-PCA alone. Forty adult patients were randomly allocated into 2 groups: ITM+IV-PCA group (n = 20) and IV-PC
Platelets interact with tumor cells and promote metastasis. The importance of platelets in posttransplant hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) recurrence is unclear. Thus, we aimed to evaluate the association between preoperative platelet count (PLT) and HCC recurrence after living donor liver transplantation. Of 359 recipients of livers from living donors for HCC, 209 of 240 patients who had preoperative PLT ≤75 × 10<sup>9</sup> /L were matched with 97 of 119 patients who had preoperative PLT >75 × 1
A safe use of intermittent hepatic inflow occlusion (IHIO) has been reported for living donor hepatectomy. However, it remains unclear whether the maneuver is safe in steatotic donors. In addition, the respective importance of macrosteatosis (MaS) and microsteatosis (MiS) is an important issue. Thus, we compared MiS and MaS with respect to the tolerance of hepatic ischemia/reperfusion (IR) injury induced by IHIO. One hundred forty-four donors who underwent a right hepatectomy were grouped accord
Our findings suggest a potential negative impact of fresh RBC transfusion on the survival of patients undergoing liver transplantation.
Donor sex appears to be an important graft factor modulating HCC recurrence after living donor liver transplantation.
Donor sex appears to be an independent factor modulating graft failure risk in male liver transplant recipients.
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