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Effect of COVID‐19 on liver transplantation in Korea
Author(s) -
Lee JeongMoo
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
transplant infectious disease
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.69
H-Index - 67
eISSN - 1399-3062
pISSN - 1398-2273
DOI - 10.1111/tid.13384
Subject(s) - medicine , outbreak , covid-19 , liver transplantation , pandemic , middle east respiratory syndrome , cirrhosis , transplantation , virology , disease , infectious disease (medical specialty)
COVID‐19 is now a pandemic with increasing numbers of cases and deaths. In addition to the economic and social damage caused by COVID‐19 outbreak prolongation, damage caused by delayed treatment of other diseases such as severe cirrhosis is also serious. We aimed to describe the effect of COVID‐19 on the number of liver transplants (LT) in South Korea. The number of LT performed in Korea during the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) outbreak, and the COVID‐19 pandemic was compared with the average number of LT performed in the past 5 years. There were 108.5 cases of LT performed per month during the MERS outbreak. It was 11% lower than the average of 122.8 cases per month for the last 5 years. LDLT and DDLT decreased by 13% to 75.3 cases and by 7.5% to 33.2 cases per month during the MERS epidemic, respectively. From January to March 2020 (COVID‐19 outbreak), the number of LT did not decrease significantly. The lockdown caused by COVID‐19 did not affect the number of liver transplants in Korea. Establishing a safe process and procedure of liver transplantation within safe boundaries can be beneficial in reducing the side effects of lockdown and saving patients' lives.