Donor Death Halts UCSF Living Donor Program

The surgery will be held Tuesday at another hospital after a kidney donor died at UCSF in November, prompting the facility to suspend its living kidney donor program. After six months of investigations by the hospital and other regulatory officials, the cause of his death is still unknown.

Other transplant programs are not impacted, such as the deceased donor kidney transplantation and living donor liver transplantation. Considering that out of the 350 transplants, only 150 are made from living donors, this will not impact the region as heavy as a complete program suspension would. The medical center said none of those deaths occurred at UCSF.

The suspension is effective immediately, the hospital said in a statement. He said, “We worry about it every day”.

The threat of death occurring in living donor patients has been a lingering problem since this type of transplant began surfacing.

And to top it all up, according to hospital records, it would seem that the UCSF and OPTN tag-team managed to secure over 10000 transplants since 1964. It is not certain as of now whether the death result due to an underlying medical condition associated with the organ procurement surgery or some other cause.

One San Francisco educator is proceeding with a surgery to help save the life of a 20-year-old former student, despite the death of a donor. The incident has been described as a nightmare by Dr. Steven Katznelson, Medical Director of California Pacific Medical Center’s kidney transplantation program in San Francisco.

Kaiser Permanente in 2006 permanently halted its entire Northern California kidney transplant program after revelations that organizational problems in the fledgling program led to surgical delays and endangered patients. They also avoided to name both the donor and the recipient. It’s decided not to perform the donor portion of the transplant surgeries, but it will carry on kidney transplantation from living and deceased donors.