Skills and resources needed for liver transplantation.

Trained specialists in hepatology, liver and biliary surgery, anesthesiology and pathology must form the core of a team for liver transplantation. The hospital must be a center for organ transplantation to provide the essential infrastructure to manage specific aspects of transplantation. A well-organized blood bank is essential to cope with acute requests for large amounts of donor blood. Because of the extremely high costs, liver transplantation has to be approved medically and politically before it can be considered as a generally accepted modality of treatment.