Janvi Karia shares her reflections of working in ICU as a 5th year medical student during the COVID-19 pandemic with the CMJ.

Winner of the MedTech Foundation & Cambridge Medicine Journal Essay Competition 2021.

COVID-19 has fundamentally altered clinical practices and guidelines. This also applies to liver transplantation. In the UK, liver transplant activity has dramatically decreased during the early months of the pandemic. The traditional logic dictates that transplantation-related immunosuppression increases the risk of COVID-19 infection and entails sub-par clinical outcomes. However, theories remain theories without clinical evidence. This article examines whether such concerns justify reducing liver transplant activity.