Ohio Hospital to Resume Transplants After Accident
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Photodisc/Thinkstock(TOLEDO, Ohio) — An Ohio hospital is set to resume live kidney transplants four months after an organ landed in the trash instead of in its intended recipient.
The University of Toledo Medical Center halted live transplants and placed two nurses and an administrator on leave after a man’s kidney — intended for his sick sister — was accidentally thrown out as medical waste. The names of the patients and the nurses have not been released.
“We cannot fathom the disappointment that those impacted have experienced over the course of the last week,” the university’s chancellor and dean of the College of Medicine, Dr. Jeffery Gold, said in a statement after the Aug. 10 incident. “The University cannot begin to express the sorrow that we feel that this unfortunate incident occurred. We apologize sincerely.”
The hospital resumed kidney transplants from deceased donors — the more common kind of kidney transplant — one week after the incident. Its decision to resume kidney transplants from live donors follows an investigation and policy changes designed to prevent such mistakes from happening again.
The University of Toledo Medical Center has performed more than 1,700 kidney transplants in the past 40 years with a 98 percent success rate, according to the hospital.
It’s unclear whether the intended recipient received a different kidney.
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