He seems to be succeeding. One of our overriding goals is to provide ease of access for referring physicians, as well as easy flow of information from the program to patients and to their physicians. The liver transplant team works with physicians in other medical fields to develop treatment plans that consider all aspects of the patient's health. Often, they are hand-picked physicians or specialists who have particular expertise in treating patients with significant liver disease. They include cardiology, pulmonology, infectious diseases, psychiatry, and interventional radiology.
Social services are available, as are financial and medical insurance counseling.
A psychiatrist and a social worker must be involved in the very early stages of the evaluation. We must be able to identify appropriate social structures and support for those patients before transplantation. If we don't set that up, it's doomed to fail. The guidelines and inclusion criteria for a minimum period of abstinence are not well defined. In principal, we do not accept patients with liver failure due to acute alcoholic hepatitis or those who were actively drinking prior to their decompensation.