Why is it possible to perform a liver transplant using just a small part of a donor’s liver, but for other organs (kidney, heart, etc) the donor would have to donate the whole organ?
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Like others say, the liver is magic in how it can regenerate, but ALSO the liver is magic in how efficient and effective it is. Generally you can lose up to 80% of your functional liver cells before you start feeling and being ill. In that same way, as little as 20% of a liver needs to be transplanted to give sufficient function to survive.
Edit: kidneys are also pretty amazing with how much function they can loose before things get serious, but because they can’t regenerate and are more fragile like, you need to transplant a whole one or nothing. Good thing we have two!
Your liver main deal is to eat up all the poison in your blood and get rid of it.
With a job like that it ended up needing to be really good at dying and growing back. So it’s special among organs that it is really good at not having much structure and growing back from any part left. So you can just throw any part in someone and it will try hard to turn back into a liver
Basically most organs are made up of permanent tissues whose cells can not regenerate at all, whereas the liver’s tissue is known as stable tissue which does have the ability to replicate but only in response to injury i.e cutting a part for a transplant. Note that stable tissues have minimal ability to replicate but the liver is the exception and has a great ability to regenerate about half of its full form. Why is the liver the exception? That I do not know.
AFAIK, the simple answer is a healthy liver can regenerate a single lobe or two as the liver can be broken down fractionally. Kidneys and hearts and etc, aren’t able to be fractional organs and be viable for transplant. It’s all or nothing.