The Perception of Medical Students at King Abdulaziz University Hospital Regarding the Liver Transplant Allocation System

Abstract

BACKGROUND The benefit of liver transplantation is not only to increase the patient's lifetime but also for persistent relief of pain and anxiety. Shortage of the organ is the main hindrance of transplantation around the world, leading authorities to pass a general law for the reasonable distribution of organs and come up with the Model for End-Stage Liver Disease (MELD) system which scores the severity of liver disease and risk of mortality in order to detect the mechanism of allocation.  Objective: This study aims to assess medical students' perception of the liver transplant and allocation system. METHODS  A cross-sectional survey was carried out among 402 medical students at King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. RESULTS  The majority of the medical students (84.4%) believed that a successful liver transplant improves both lifetime and quality of life. Most of the students also saw that the minimum survival rate should be five years after transplantation and that the patient should recover to be at least ambulatory, even if restricted by strenuous physical activity. When asked whether urgency or prospect of success defined a successful transplant, most of the students who chose urgency were preclinical (50.7%), while the prospect of success was the dominant answer chosen by students in their clinical years of study (66.1%). CONCLUSION  The criteria determining the success of a liver transplant include a gain in both lifetime and quality of life. The majority of respondents wanted the capacity to benefit to be considered in the liver allocation system.