On Nov. 27, 1989, a surgical team at the University of Chicago Medical Center performed a live donor transplant (LADLT) on 21-month-old Alyssa Smith. The surgeons removed a portion of the liver from her mother, Teresa Smith, a 29-year-old woman from Schertz, Texas (20 miles from San Antonio), and transplanted that tissue into her 21-month-old daughter.

Alyssa, who weighed 25 pounds at the time, suffered from biliary atresia, the most common fatal liver disease in childhood.  On May 27, 2006, Alyssa, the recipient of the world’s first successful living-donor liver transplant, graduates from high school in San Antonio, Texas.