Liver Transplantation in the Third Millennium in North America: The Strategy for Success

Abstract

Delivery of liver transplantation care has evolved, out of necessity, as programs have developed knowledge and expertise beyond the initial surgical challenges. This evolution has brought professionals from many different medical specialties together and has recognized the important contribution that other professions such as nursing, social work, pharmacy, psychology, and others that have resulted in a model for team-based care that today is applicable to other areas of medicine. In the third millennium, these teams will need to integrate further to become more efficient and cost conscious while they expand their attention to patient-centered quality of life outcomes in addition to the more traditional patient and graft survival results.