Calif. liver program turned down donor organs: report

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – More than 30 people waiting for
liver transplants at a Southern California hospital died during
the past two years as the facility turned down scores of donor
organs that might have saved them, it was reported on Thursday.

Citing a federal report obtained under the U.S. Freedom of
Information Act, the Los Angeles Times said government
inspectors have found numerous deficiencies in the transplant
program at the University of California at Irvine Medical
Center in Orange.

The UCI Medical Center has performed just five liver
transplants this year — fewer than half the number required to
maintain federal funding — and fell below the minimum in each
of the previous three years, according to the U.S. Centers for
Medicare and Medicaid Services report cited by the newspaper.

The federal report, dated August 5, also said the hospital
had failed to meet federal standards requiring an accredited
liver transplant programs to keep a surgeon available around
the clock for urgent cases.

A spokeswoman for the hospital, Susan Mancia, told Reuters
the hospital has recruited a full-time transplant surgeon who
would start early next year, and that part-time physicians
would provide coverage until then. She declined further
comment.

The federal report said the survival rate for UCI patients
who received liver transplants fell short of the minimum level
required for federal certification from January 2002 to June
2004.

The Los Angeles Times said the federal review was prompted
by a complaint from a former UCI patient who had languished on
the transplant list from 1998 to 2002 and ultimately underwent
a transplant at another hospital.

She discovered only through a lawsuit that UCI had turned
down 38 livers and 57 kidneys offered on her behalf, the
newspaper said.

Dr. David Imagawa, who has overseen UCI’s liver transplant
program since July, acknowledged in the Los Angeles Times
article that “there were some problems, and we’re moving
forward to change them.” He did not address specific
shortcomings found in the federal report cited by the
newspaper.

Although UCI often turned down donor livers on grounds they
were of poor quality, the head of a regional organ procurement
group called OneLegacy insisted most of those livers were later
transplanted into patients at other hospitals, the newspaper
said.

From August 2004 to July 2005, alone, UCI received 122
liver offers, most of them from OneLegacy, but only 12 were
transplanted — including two that went to the same patient
because the first one failed, according to the report obtained
by the newspaper.