One in Four Liver Transplants Go to Heavy Drinkers in the UK
Sarah Knapton, Telegraph:
Transplants for people with alcohol-related liver damage rose by more than 60 percent in the last decade, while waiting lists for donors has lengthened. Dr Tony Calland, chairman of the British Medical Association’s ethics committee, says surgeons could refuse transplants to heavy drinkers unless they agree to curb their alcohol habit.
“Organs are precious resources and should be used where the clinical outcome, the patient’s health, justifies the use of something so scarce,” Dr Calland told the Observer. “You have to have to have a very definite evidence that the person is going to stop drinking.
“If someone won’t promise, you could refuse them the transplant on clinical rather than ethical grounds.” Official figures show that in the year to March 31 2008, a total of 151 liver transplants out of 623 in the UK went to people with alcohol-related liver disease.
Cases of cirrhosis of the liver have tripled over the past decade. The rise was especially sharp in men and women under 45 where death rates now exceed the European average.
