A liver transplant can give someone with chronic liver disease or liver failure another chance at a healthy life. But many people spend years on the transplant waitlist because there aren't enough organs for everyone. Some people die before they can get this life-saving surgery.
Doctors like Curtis Argo, MD, are working to change that. He's medical director of the living donor liver transplant program at UVA Health. A living liver donation is when a healthy person gives part of their liver to someone who needs a transplant. Each section can grow into a whole liver in each person.
Get To Know a Liver Transplant Doctor
We asked Argo our 7 quick questions.
1. What has most inspired and shaped your approach to patient care?
Approaching patients with humility and humanism and providing them with information and my advice/opinion to help guide them to their best options that fit their perspective on their health and navigating health care, especially with the commitment that being a liver transplant patient entails.
2. What's your favorite part of your job?
Seeing a patient go from suffering from liver disease complications to liver transplant and the improvement in quality of life that usually follows.
3. What’s your biggest fear when you’re a patient?
Navigating unknown and unfamiliar situations.
4. What do you do for stress relief?
I read, exercise, spend time with family and friends, watch sports (baseball and racing are my favorites).
5. Dogs or cats?
Dogs.
Ready to Save a Life?
You can save someone's life with a living kidney or liver donation.
6. What’s the last movie you saw? Thumbs up or down?
Oppenheimer. Thumbs way up!
7. What’s the best advice you’ve ever heard?
Be kind to everyone because that’s how you would like to be treated, and you never know when you might need someone’s help or kindness back.
