Pediatric Liver Transplant Services

Patient and family services

Our Pediatric Transplant Center offers families a full suite of resources to help them through the transplant care process, including family-centered care, help with lodging, and outreach programs across the West.

Lifetime medical care

Once we see your child, we form a collaborative relationship with your child’s primary care pediatrician, gastroenterologist, or hepatologist at home to care for your child as he or she grows. We conduct virtual visits with you and your child in collaboration with your local doctors and, when warranted, in-person visits.

When your child has a liver transplant, he or she is assigned a transplant care coordinator who arranges care for your child into adulthood, including follow-up visits at outreach clinics throughout the West with our liver transplant care team. Your transplant coordinator is always a resource for your questions before, during, and after your child’s transplant.

Second opinions

We are happy to offer a second opinion and help you find answers to the questions you may have about your child’s liver condition or liver transplant. 

Adolescent and young adult programs

We know that having a transplant is challenging for children, especially when they become adolescents and young adults who need to understand their condition and actively participate in their own care to maintain good health as they grow into adults. That’s why we’ve created unique programs just for them.

Teen clinic

Our unique teen clinic for liver transplant patients helps prepare children ages 12 to 20 for their future adult health care needs. In this all-day event, held four to six times a year, we offer two separate sessions, one for younger adolescents ages 12 to 15, and one for older adolescents ages 15 to 20. Our multidisciplinary team includes hepatologists, adolescent medicine doctors, child psychiatrists, social service workers, parent mentors, and transplant coordinators. The team speaks to your son or daughter initially without you in the room. This allows your child to practice a medical appointment independently. Visits focus on learning how to describe their health status, learning names and doses of medications, the purposes of lab tests, and learning self-advocacy.

After your child is seen by the multidisciplinary team, we invite you to join the visit. Teens then gather in a group that is led by our psychologist. Parents are taken to a different room for a group that is led by our social worker and parent mentor. Both groups aim to provide support and guidance that is unique to the adolescent time of life.

Program goals, we help teens:

  • Gain a comprehensive understanding of their health.
  • Learn how to independently navigate the health care system.
  • Meet other adolescents with transplants.
  • Set age-specific goals for younger and older adolescents.
  • Address issues they face due to having a transplant as a teen.

Young adult transition clinic

In this clinic, we introduce young adults who are 18 years or older to the Stanford Health Care liver transplant program and the experts who will care for them going forward. We help young adults establish care with their new provider and gain familiarity with the adult clinic. During the young adult transition clinic, your child will meet with an adult transplant hepatologist at Stanford Health Care.

Clinic is typically held once a month at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford, depending on need. Patients meet with the adult transplant hepatologist and a program social worker. Together, a transition plan is created that is individualized to each patient.

We recognize that each young adult has specific strengths and weaknesses when it comes to managing their own care. Our clinic enables our two teams to identify where patients will be most successful and where they might need additional help. Our goal is to seamlessly transition patients to the adult team when they are ready.

Transplant camp

Children ages 8 to 18 who are alive and well because they have received a heart, liver, lung, kidney, or multiorgan transplant are welcome to participate in our Solid Organ Transplant Summer Camp, held each year.

This inspirational and uplifting weeklong camp takes place among the redwoods at St. Dorothy’s Rest and includes fun activities like swimming, crafts, scavenger hunts, sports, and campfires. Because many of the attendees have complex medical regimens, seven hospital nurses go along, but parents and doctors stay behind.