Liver Transplantation - Challenges and Opportunities

This book presents the different challenges and opportunities in liver transplantation today, especially given the multifaceted and multidisciplinary nature of liver transplantation. These include the advent of minimally invasive and robotic surgery, the role of liver transplantation in patients with different types of primary or metastatic liver cancer with the concept of transplant oncology, applications of today’s technology in liver transplantation, the challenges in organ donation and the different types of donors, the differences around the globe in approaching donation and the practice of liver transplantation, the challenges involved in setting priorities for the limited organ supply, the progress in novel immunosuppression medications and regimens, the use of machine perfusion in liver transplantation, and the critical issue of education, both for the public but also for medical professionals, to name a few. All of these issues and many more serve to stress the facts that liver transplantation (1) is multifaceted as an amalgamation of several different medical, legal, social, and other disciplines and (2), more importantly, is continuously evolving. It is these two key features that make liver transplantation one of the most intriguing fields in modern medicine, as well as many believe it is a mirror of society.