The Hospital

Liver Disease (2x5)

Ημερομηνία προβολής: Αυγ 23, 2010

For the first time in their careers, doctors are seeing people in their twenties with lifestyle-related liver disease. King's College Hospital in London has the largest liver transplant programme in Europe. The final episode of the series explores how staff deal with the vast amount of patients suffering from liver disease, the difficulties in managing the demand for transplants and their efforts to curb the surging numbers of people playing a high-risk game with their lives. Dr Kosh Agarwal is a Consultant at King's College Hospital's Liver Unit, where they have patients referred from all over the country. The most common lifestyle reason for liver transplants in the UK is alcohol-related liver disease. In five years the number of patients at King's with lifestyle-related liver disease has more than doubled. The liver unit has approximately 150 people on its transplant waiting list. A team of over 20 people has to agree on who makes the list and their weekly meetings can be fraught. 'The idea of who's deserving and who's not deserving I think is a very thorny for us as a transplant unit,' says Kosh.