Benefit in liver transplantation: a survey among medical staff, patients, medical students and non-medical university staff and students

BACKGROUND The allocation of any scarce health care resource, especially a lifesaving resource, can create profound ethical and legal challenges. Liver transplant allocation currently is based upon urgency, a sickest-first approach, and does not utilize capacity to benefit. While urgency can be described reasonably well with the MELD system, benefit encompasses multiple dimensions of patients' well-being. Currently, the balance between both principles is ill-defined. METHODS This survey with 502 participants examines how urgency and benefit are weighted by different stakeholders (medical staff, patients on the liver transplant list or already transplanted, medical students and non-medical university staff and students). RESULTS Liver transplant patients favored the sickest-first allocation, although all other groups tended to favor benefit. Criteria of a successful transplantation were a minimum survival of at least 1 year and recovery of functional status to being ambulatory and capable of all self-care (ECOG 2). An individual delisting decision was accepted when the 1-year survival probability would fall below 50%. Benefit was found to be a critical variable that may also trigger the willingness to donate organs. CONCLUSIONS The strong interest of stakeholder for successful liver transplants is inadequately translated into current allocation rules.