BMJ  2003;327:1287 (29 November), doi:10.1136/bmj.327.7426.1287-b

Letter

Role of living liver donation

Requirement for transplantation is high

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR—Neuberger and Price make a good case that living liver donation should be available in the NHS, and one might well ask why this is taking so long when the procedure has been in use so widely over the past five years.¹

There is certainly a need for more liver transplant operations as the figures quoted for 2002 show: 62 deaths in patients on the waiting list and another 25 patients removed from it because they had become too ill. The waiting list for recipients requiring blood group O cadaver organs in some transplant centres is now around 12 months, which is unacceptable.

The UK transplant rate is already one of the lowest in the West, and the chief medical officer in his annual report two years ago drew attention to the substantial and worrying increase in the number of deaths from cirrhosis in men of working age. . . . [Full text of this article]

Institute of Hepatology, University College London, London WC1E 6HX

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