San Diego

The condition of a San Diego woman who received a new liver Monday in the first liver transplant ever performed at UC San Diego Medical Center improved Tuesday as doctors upgraded her condition from critical to serious.

The woman, whose name has not been made public, passed the night satisfactorily and was able to respond to questions from doctors Tuesday, said Sheri Smith, a hospital spokeswoman.

“The first 24 hours are crucial to know the success of the surgical procedure,” Smith said. The operation began at 5:50 a.m. Monday, after doctors returned from Bakersfield with a liver for the transplant, and the procedure lasted 10 hours.

Smith said the patient is expected to spend the next few days in the intensive care unit and a month to six weeks in the hospital. It could be six months before doctors are certain that her body will not reject the transplanted organ.

The UCSD liver transplant program is the only one in San Diego and one of only a handful in the Western United States. A liver transplant program at Sharp Memorial Hospital folded in 1984 after five of the first six patients died.