A SERVICE
OF 
UNOS Board to Vote
on Liver Plan
RICHMOND, Va.- November 1, 2000· by TNN Medical Reporter
Virginia Baskerville
- The United Network for Organ Sharing's newly proposed scale to
determine the medical urgency of patients waiting for liver transplants is
about to move another step forward. The UNOS Liver and Intestinal Organ
Transplantation Committee recommended approval of the proposed policy on
October 12. Now, the proposal will go before the UNOS board of directors at its
meeting on November 16 and 17 in Washington, D.C. After the board takes action,
the plan will go to the Department of Health and Human Services for
consideration. The proposed policy "would create a continuous scale to rank
liver patients based on medical test results that are significantly associated
with short-term death without a liver transplant. The scale would be more
refined than the current medical urgency codes used in liver allocation, and
the application of a continuous scale would deemphasize the need to apply a
patient's waiting time to determine priority for liver offers," UNOS said. The
plan would not affect UNOS's current status 1 designation, which addresses the
needs of extremely urgent patients with acute liver failure. For Your
Information: UNOS posts a statement at
www.unos.org/Newsroom/archive_newsrelease_20001023_liverscale.htm.
See related Transplant News Network articles: "UNOS to Host Forum on Liver
Allocation Policy," September 1, 2000; and "UNOS Proposes Liver Plan," August
15, 2000.
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