Sahin TT, Akbulut S, Yilmaz S. COVID-19 pandemic: Its impact on liver disease and liver transplantation. World J Gastroenterol 2020; 26(22): 2987-2999 [PMID: 32587443 DOI: 10.3748/wjg.v26.i22.2987]
Corresponding Author of This Article
Sami Akbulut, MD, Associate Professor, Deaprtment of Surgery and Liver Transplant Institute, Inonu University Faculty of Medicine, Elazig Yolu 10. Km, Malatya 44280, Turkey. akbulutsami@gmail.com
Research Domain of This Article
Transplantation
Article-Type of This Article
Minireviews
Open-Access Policy of This Article
This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
World J Gastroenterol. Jun 14, 2020; 26(22): 2987-2999 Published online Jun 14, 2020. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v26.i22.2987
COVID-19 pandemic: Its impact on liver disease and liver transplantation
Tevfik Tolga Sahin, Sami Akbulut, Sezai Yilmaz
Tevfik Tolga Sahin, Sami Akbulut, Sezai Yilmaz, Deaprtment of Surgery and Liver Transplant Institute, Inonu University Faculty of Medicine, Malatya 244280, Turkey
Author contributions: Akbulut S and Sahin TT conceived the project and designed research; all authors wrote the manuscript and reviewed final version.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare no competing interests.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Sami Akbulut, MD, Associate Professor, Deaprtment of Surgery and Liver Transplant Institute, Inonu University Faculty of Medicine, Elazig Yolu 10. Km, Malatya 44280, Turkey. akbulutsami@gmail.com
Received: May 7, 2020 Peer-review started: May 7, 2020 First decision: May 15, 2020 Revised: May 23, 2020 Accepted: June 9, 2020 Article in press: June 9, 2020 Published online: June 14, 2020 Processing time: 38 Days and 11 Hours
Core Tip
Core tip: Data regarding the effect of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection on liver transplant (LT) recipients are very limited. We have performed 35 living donor liver transplantations since the first corona virus infectious disease-2019 (COVID-19) case was observed in Turkey. We routinely test living liver donors and recipients for SARS-CoV-2 with nasopharyngeal swabs before the liver transplantation procedure. Furthermore, we repeated this test before discharging the patients. We have not found any SARS-CoV-2-positive LT recipients or donors, nor have we found any patients with COVID-19-like pneumonia. We have limited the number of patients going to the outpatient clinic, and only performed LT when it was urgently needed. We took the necessary precautions to protect the healthcare personnel by limiting the duration of work and providing protective equipment to all, including inpatients.
