Treatment of the postoperative alcoholic liver transplant recipient with other addictions

✍ Scribed by Coffman, K L ;Hoffman, A ;Sher, L ;Rojter, S ;Vierling, J ;Makowka, L

• Publisher: Wiley (John Wiley & Sons)
• Year: 1997
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 78 KB
• Volume: 3
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1074-3022
• DOI: 10.1002/lt.500030320

✦ Synopsis

A s liver transplantation in the alcoholic patient has become more common, the outcome in these patients has become important information in grounding the ethical debate that still surrounds this charged topic. Controversy has existed since alcoholic patients began receiving organ transplants in the late 1980s. Reports from the Pittsburgh group indicated a high likelihood that patients would remain abstinent after transplantation. These reports were greeted with skepticism. Ethicists voiced philosophical differences of opinion and raised objections centered around fairness in distribution of scarce resources. These authors recognized early that the sheer number of alcoholic patients compared with the number of patients with other types of liver disease would result in increasing competition for scarce organs. They viewed alcoholism as a self-inflicted disease that did not merit such a costly intervention. In addition, the courts pressed addiction experts to develop reasonable and rational selection criteria on which to base clinical decisions in evaluating alcoholic transplant candidates. 7,