National Liver Offering Scheme Introduced

A new system has been introduced to allocate livers to patients on the liver transplant waiting list.

If you are on the waiting list for a liver transplant, you should very soon receive a letter explaining the new National Liver Offering Scheme for liver transplantation. This new scheme means that potential organs (livers) for transplant will be matched to patients on the waiting list in a more in-depth way. This is expected to increase the number of lives saved and improved by liver transplant.

What's new?

A new system to decide who is offered available organs for liver transplant first has been introduced.

Transplant Benefit Score (TBS)

The new system uses a scoring system called the Transplant Benefit Score (TBS), which is more in-depth than the current UKELD scoring system, and takes into account features of patients on the Waiting List (such as age, time on Waiting List, blood test results) AND features from the liver donor (such as age, BMI, whether the organ is DCD or DBD etc).

Variant Syndrome (VS)

A small proportion of available organs will be offered to patients waiting for a liver transplant with Variant Syndrome (VS). VS refers to patients for whom the TBS is not appropriate and their position on the Waiting List will be prioritised according to waiting time. The frequency of organs offered to VS patients is based on the proportion of VS patients registered on the List (which is around three in every hundred organs offered).

National Allocation

Allocations will be made to patients identified nationally (national allocation).

If you are already on the Waiting List, your TBS has already been calculated and the change over will be seamless. Do contact your transplant coordinator if you have any questions.