Liver transplantation for chronic hepatitis C viral infection

HCV infection is a common cause of both liver disease in patients undergoing liver transplantation and postoperative damage to the allograft. Emerging techniques to diagnose this infection have enabled us to understand the relation between pretransplantation and post-transplantation infection and to study the consequences of infection in these immunocompromised patients. The use of anti-HCV-positive donors is highly controversial and will remain so until the natural history of post-transplantation HCV infection is known. Study of the relation between histologic damage and levels of HCV replication will likely provide insights into the biology of this virus and mechanisms of hepatic damage.