imaging of post operative complications of liver transplantation

Liver transplantation is performed for a variety of irreversible acute and chronic liver diseases for which no other satisfactory therapy is avaible. Patients are selected for transplantation when their life expectancy without transplantation is less than the life expectancy following the procedure. Hepatitis C is the most common disease requiring transplantation, following by alcoholic liver disease and cryptogenic cirrhosis.Ultrasound is the primary imaging modality in detection and follow up of the early and delayed complications of the liver transplantation and color Doppler ultrasound is very important in the early detection of the vascular complications as stenosis ,thrombosis and pseudoaneurysm of hepatic artery ,portal vein ,IVC and hepatic vein especially for early diagnosis of stenosis as severe stenosis can lead to allograft rejection and progress further to the development of all complications as it progress to thrombosis . CT and MRI are important imaging techniques in evaluation of post-operative complications of liver transplantation especially in evaluation of vascular mapping, in view of low cost of CT and its more availability, it is considered superior to MRI and also CT better evaluates other abdominal organs than MRI. Bile ducts anatomy is only evaluated with MRCP.