Transplant Evaluation: Medical Considerations

What sort of information do I want, and transplant centers want, about liver disease itself?

First of all, what's the cause? Is this alcohol, hepatitis C, or a genetic disease such as hemochromatosis, or autoimmune hepatitis? How bad is the liver disease? This information comes in two ways: it comes as MELD score, Child score, and it also comes in decompensation. Is this person getting paracenteses every 2 weeks? Is this person in and out of the hospital every month because of their hepatic encephalopathy? Or is this a patient whose first episode of ascites was 2 months ago who hasn't had any other problems? We like to get a sense of how bad their liver disease is.

Then tell us something about what type of treatment this person has had. Have they been banded, have they bled from their varices, are they on prophylactic antibiotics? Have they ever been treated for hepatitis C?