title: The benefit of smart phone usage in liver organ procurement.
abstract: A 56-year-old man was on the transplant list with end-stage liver disease secondary to hepatitis C when a donor liver became available at a location 545 km away. The procurement team, consisting of a senior and junior fellow, went on the retrieval, while the staff surgeon remained in the hospital with the recipient. At the time of organ procurement, a suspicious lesion was identified in the left lateral lobe. The transplant fellows took intraoperative pictures of the lesion with a smart phone and sent them to the staff surgeon for advice. A teleconsultation, facilitated by images sent from the smart phone, took place over the next 22 min. The decision was made to proceed with the transplant, as it was felt that the lesion could be resected from the liver allograft. Had the fellows not been able to interact with the staff surgeon in real-time during the surgery, there is a high likelihood that the organ would have been rejected by the staff surgeon due to the unexpected finding. The patient's postoperative course was relatively uneventful with no evidence of infection. The patient was discharged from hospital and continues to do well. We expect that the role of smart phones in remote consultation will continue to expand in future.
authors.affiliation: Department of Surgery, Division of General Surgery, University of Western Ontario, 330 Windermere Road, London, Ontario N6A 5A5, Canada. krisbelize@hotmail.com
authors.forename: Kris P
authors.initials: KP
authors.lastname: Croome
authors.forename: Jeff
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Shum
authors.forename: Mamoun A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Al-Basheer
authors.forename: Hideya
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Kamei
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Bloch
authors.forename: Douglas
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Quan
authors.forename: Roberto
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Hernandez-Alejandro
mesh_terms: D040421:Cell Phone; D006526:Hepatitis C / Q000150:complications; D006801:Humans; D007676:Kidney Failure, Chronic / Q000209:etiology / Q000601:surgery; D008099:Liver / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D016031:Liver Transplantation; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D019114:Remote Consultation / Q000295:instrumentation*; D009927:Tissue and Organ Procurement