Liver transplantation for the alcoholic patient.

A review of the data from the University of Michigan and other transplant centers suggests that the outcome of liver transplantation, when considered as either mortality or psychological morbidity, is similar for alcoholics and nonalcoholics alike. The process to select alcoholic patients for transplantation has been outlined herein. Care is taken to identify alcoholic patients in whom long-term abstinence is likely, but a fixed period of abstinence prior to transplantation does not appear to be a useful selection tool. Resource utilization by alcoholics undergoing liver transplantation does not appear to differ from that by nonalcoholic recipients. Carefully conducted long-term studies are necessary to assess the natural history of liver allografts in alcoholics.