Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 March 2009
Since the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Consensus Development Conference (1983) concluded that liver transplantation was a procedure deserving of wider application to the treatment of end-stage liver disease, there has been a very considerable increase in the number of centers performing liver transplantation, in Europe as well as in the United States. The number of operations performed has increased logarithmically (Figure 1, in Höckerstedt and Kankaanpää, p. 453). With the detailed overall assessment of liver transplantation in Europe by Höckerstedt and Kankaanpää, we will take the opportunity to review the position in Great Britain from a physician's, i.e., non-surgeon's, viewpoint as seen from one of the two centers (Cambridge/King's College and Birmingham) currently recognized in this country. This is based on an experience of 255 cases dating from the first liver transplant performed in Great Britain by Professor Roy Y. Calne in May 1968.