The non-operative management of hemodynamically stable patients with liver trauma has become the standard of care. Non-operative treatment has a success rate of >80%. In the majority of cases of hemodynamic instability or high grade liver injuries, however, a surgical approach is necessary. As for conservative treatment of liver trauma the surveillance of patients in the ICU is of utmost importance. Repeat CT scans are only necessary in patients with high grade injuries or in case of complications. Interventional procedures, such as the endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography in cases of biliary complications or angiography for vascular complications, are increasingly being used in order to avoid surgery. The success rates of non-operative strategies have been improving continuously over the last decades.

The extreme shortage of donor organs in Germany has led to a major discrepancy between availability and requirement of organs for liver transplantation, and-as aconsequence-to an allocation dilemma. This results on one hand in a high lethality on the waiting list and, on the other, to worse results after transplantation, due to the current organ allocation policy favoring extremely ill patients. Potential solutions are (1) increasing the number of donor organs; (2) innovative approaches for improved use of suboptimal donor organs (e.g., from older, multimorbid donors, fatty livers); (3) an increase in living organ donation; and (4) modified/optimized allocation rules. Measures 2 and 3 would benefit from more centralization of liver transplantation in Germany. Since all four options are probably not realizable in Germany in the near future, organ shortage and the dilemma in organ allocation will persist.

The data on the synthesis and properties of benzo[g]indoles accumulated mainly over a period of the past 15 20 years are integrated. Various variants of pyrrole ring and naphthalene nucleus closure are considered. It is demonstrated that, in addition to the expected similarity between benzo[g]indoles and indoles, there are noticeable differences between them as well, especially where the synthesis of the benzoindole system is concerned. Practical applications of benzo[g]indoles are discussed.