Practice patterns and anesthesia-related costs for liver transplantation

C osts at the clinical end of medicine are driven by practice patterns. In our corner of medicine, those practice patterns are driven by hepatologists, surgeons, anesthesiologists, intensivists, medical consultants, nurses, etc. Unfortunately, patterns of practice are by no means uniformly standardized, primarily because of the lack of solid clinical evidence to clearly call one form of care superior to another, whether it is more or less expensive. Our intraoperative care of transplant recipients is driven by the needs of surgeons and by our own requirements. Such needs are driven by preferences, experience, science, and occasionally whim. Objective data regarding the risks and benefits of using or avoiding various technologies is limited and sometimes conflicting.