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Recognising a liver condition is one part of care. Knowing who should assess it, when a patient needs specialist input and how services connect is another.
Research co-authored by Kuwait-based gastroenterologist and hepatologist Dr Maen Almattooq examines that second challenge across the Middle East and North Africa.
The 2025 study mapped models of care for metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease, commonly abbreviated to MASLD, across 17 countries. Almattooq’s listed affiliation is the gastroenterology and hepatology department at Jaber Al-Ahmad Hospital in Kuwait.
Looking beyond an individual consultation
The study surveyed 130 experts about guidelines, infrastructure and referral systems. Among the findings, 39.2 per cent of respondents reported structured referral pathways, while 73.1 per cent reported an absence of national strategies.
These are regional survey responses. They are not a measurement of the proportion of Kuwaiti patients receiving appropriate care, and they do not establish the performance of a particular hospital.
The published paper examines how services are organised around a condition, rather than concentrating only on a treatment.
Why the route through care matters
A care pathway connects decisions that can otherwise remain separate: identifying a concern, assessing its significance, deciding who should manage it and arranging follow-up.
For a patient, those decisions need to form a comprehensible sequence. For clinicians, they require clarity about responsibilities and access to the appropriate expertise.
The organisational question is therefore practical. A service may have capable specialists while still needing clearer arrangements for how patients reach them.
That observation should not be read as a finding about any named Kuwaiti provider. It is the broader reason research into referral systems matters alongside research into medicines and procedures.
A Kuwaiti clinician in a regional discussion
Almattooq also appears in the professional leadership listings of regional liver-disease organisations, including MENASL and SLMENA.
Those roles place his published work within a wider network of clinicians examining liver care across different health systems. They do not imply that the countries involved face identical conditions or require identical solutions.
The regional comparison raises questions that must then be examined locally: which patients are being referred, what information accompanies them and where follow-up responsibility sits.
For a Kuwaiti audience, Almattooq’s contribution offers a route into a less visible part of healthcare. The story is not only about what happens during a consultation. It is about how the system helps a person reach the right consultation, with a clear next step afterwards.
