Bronx, NY – Montefiore Medical Center has shut down its live-donor organ-transplant program following the recent death of a patient on the operating table, the New York Post reported Tuesday.
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A woman who was trying to donate a kidney to a relative died during surgery at the Bronx hospital after her aorta was cut or ruptured during the operation, according the the Post. The woman, mother to a 2-year-old child, was the first live-donor fatality at Montefiore in more than 40 years.
A spokesman for the State Health Department told the Post they are investigating the incident. Sources also told the paper that the hospital suspended the live-donor program on its own, and was not forced to do so by the state. Montefiore is conducting its own investigation, according to the Post.
“This is a terrible tragedy. The patient experienced a rare complication of this surgery,” a hospital spokesman told the Post. “The doctors recognized the problem and took extensive steps to save the patient’s life.’’
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let them suspend their chemo too. it killed a patient.
It might have been a mistake, but cutting her aorta isn’t a “complication” in the surgery.
It sounds like a big mistake has been made.
I donated a kidney at Montefiore in 2005. I am doing great, thank G-d! I go for regular check-ups, as most of the population should do, not just kidney donors. My results are great, thank G-d. My kidney function with one kidney, is about the same as when I had 2 kidneys! They say when one donates a kidney – the other one enlarges to make up for the loss of the 2nd kidney.
I know many other people who donated a kidney at Montefiore and they are all doing great, thank G-d! I know of one person who wanted to donate a kidney, but only wanted to donate a kidney at Montefiore, as their transplant division has a great reputation. The person who needed a kidney, transferred to Montefiore because he donor only wanted Montefiore! And both the donor and the recipient are doing very well, thank G-d!
Not long ago I went to a nephrologist with someone. The nephrologist who is with another hospital and has nothing to do with Montefiore, only had praise for Montefiore. He says they turn a lot of donors down. Which is good. Montefiore is more careful with the donor screening then most other hospitals. For example, they will not allow someone who is very obese to donate a kidney – while some of the other hospitals will. Also, even if the person isn’t obese, but overweight and has a big stomach, they will ask the donor to lose weight first, as it is riskier to donate if one has excess weight on their stomach. Another hospital may say ok for the donor to donate, but not Montefiore. The many kidney donors I know who donated a kidney at Montefiore – all have praise for Montefiore.
This is an unfortunate incident that could have occurred at any hospital. Being that this is such a rare thing that a donor should die, no one should fear donating a kidney, if they are donating a kidney at a reputable hospital.. Just as driving on a highway can be very dangerous – unfortunately, so many fatal accidents happen each year. People are not going to stop driving or even just being a passenger in a vehicle, which is also a risk.
My deepest condolences to the family of this woman who died.
There is no reason for any potential donors to be worried. From my understanding of the incident (I’m not a doctor and don’t know much about these things) this was something which could have happened at any surgery, it had nothing to do with the donation of the kidney per se.
Obviously someone’s hand slipped or something like that. That could have happened anywhere. I don’t know anything about this hospital one way or the other, but this incident wouldn’t change my opinion about any hospital.
Unless, of course, I already didn’t like the hospital and was looking for any random tragedy to bolster my preconceived opinion.
There is a vast difference between the aorta being cut and a spontaneous rupture due to an aortic aneurysm. With out complete knowledge of what took place during the surgery it is impossible to assign blame. And one should reserve reserve there negative comments until one knows fact. I can tell you from personal observation many years ago when i was in training and was an assistnat during cardiac surgery being done by a world famous CV surgeon. The patient had a spontaneous aortic aneurysm rupture. This defect had not shown up on previous studies and happend mid procedure. Fortunately for the patient they were almost on bypass and the surgeron had the skill, calmness and presence of H’BH to save the patient. Even with the heroic efforts by all, the patient still suffered a slight neurological deficet due to blood loss. This was not the fault of anyone, just anatomy that did not make its presence known untill the incident occured. So please try not to condem until facts are known.
Usually the cause of this type of accident (or negligence) is when they use Laparoscopic surgery instead of the traditional larger cut type of surgery.
I am sure that when all the details come out we will “find out” this little known secret that laparoscopic surgery increases the liklihood of such errors.
The reason is because with traditional surgery, using a full large cut, the surgeon and all his helpers can very easily and clearly see everything out in the open so it is virtually impossible to make such a HUGE mistake.
With Laparoscopic surgery, they make 3 extremely small incisions and the surgeon and all his helps can see virtually ZERO with direct eye contact and they only way they have any idea what they are doing is only through high technology cameras which is much more limited vision that the older traditional way of doing surgery.
Mistakes happen every hour in the USA…Why would you suspend a great opertaing procedure with a great reputation like Montifore? They should investigate the cause of death but they saves so many lives with their great reputation os success…
Similarly the greater difficulty is not only in restricted vision but also in the actual cutting, where it requires significantly more skill (and therefore it is much more prone to error) when the cutting is done through laparoscopic remote controlled fancy instruments as compared to the older traditional method of cutting the traditional surgery method.
Most hospitals tell you the “advantages of laparoscopic surgery vs. the older traditional way in that there is less bleeding, less pain and faster healing which makes it sound very attractive.
But what makes it almost “criminal negligence”, is that they rarely tell you about the higher risks of laparoscopic surgery and that the older traditional method has much less, of any such type of such type of potential tragedies.
Maybe it never happened at this particular Hospital, ever before, but it definitely DID happen before (during transplants, killing the donor) specifically BECAUSE they had used laparoscopic surgery and it definitely was officially acknowledged that could have been prevented (in other similar situations) if it was traditional surgery instead of laparoscopic surgery.