70 deaths, 249 hospitalizations, due to inadequate screening, lack of follow-up of donated organs –

In a report released Wednesday, the Senate Finance Committee announced that unsuccessful harvesting, screening and transplants of donated organs in the United States are responsible for at least 70 deaths and the development of 249 preventable diseases.

The full report, obtained by the Washington Postcita, on failure to detect diseases in organs that will pose a problem for the next host, mismatches of blood groups, and perfectly usable organs lost or discarded due to mismanagement of the transport chain.

Among those cases was a man in South Carolina who had a lung transplant that was incompatible with his body, which killed him the next day. A heart transplant patient in Wisconsin was said to die within three years after learning that the heart they received was from a person with brain cancer.

The error of these issues spans multiple groups. First, individual nonprofit organizations that organize organ procurement and transplants in each region, called organ procurement organizations (OPOs). The United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) is also responsible for overseeing these groups. Then, of course, federal officials are also responsible for regulating these groups.

According to official data, there are currently 105,960 Americans on the transplant list, with 17 dying while waiting every day. A new contact is added to the list every nine minutes.

The report submitted by the Commission included 1,118 reports submitted to UNOS between 2010 and 2020. The 70 death toll included data from 2008 to 2015.

During the seven-year death span, 174,338 organs were transplanted in the United States.

While fatal errors are rare, when they do occur they can be devastating.

The documents list multiple organs that could be used in their place and that were inexplicably discarded or lost.

Two healthy kidneys were accidentally discarded in 2020 in Indiana. About one in five kidneys purchased for transplant were unused that year, and in most cases no concrete explanation was given as to why.

A donated kidney was lost on a flight from South Carolina to Florida in 2015. Another disappeared in 2017 when it was shipped from Palmetto state to California.

In both cases, one transplant recipient’s surgery was canceled due to error.

Sometimes, a previously transplanted organ had to be removed from the recipient after doctors discovered there was a problem that could cause serious complications.

UNOS leaders stated that they are “committed to continuous improvement, monitoring and adaptation; a place where thousands of people across the country come together every day to save lives. Pictured: UNOS headquarters in Richmond, Virginia

Problems like this should be determined very well before transplantation, by evaluating the blood type of the organ and the risk of the recipient of a dangerous disease.

Some patients will die as a result. Others will have to undergo multiple surgeries to undo the error sooner.

In 2020, a surgeon told a Wisconsin man he was probably younger than three years old after receiving a new heart from a person with aggressive brain cancer.

People with metastatic cancer should not have their organs used because of the risk of cancer recurrence while in the recipient.

There is no information on the current status of the heart recipient.

In 2018, a South Carolina donor removed organs for use in four recipients.

In one case, a South Carolina man died one day after receiving lungs that were not suitable for transplant (archive photo)

However, there was an error in the blood groups, which resulted in all four patients having incompatible organs.

The man who received the donor’s lungs died a day after receiving them.

In 2017, a Nevada kidney transplant recipient died of tularemia, or rabbit flu, after receiving an organ from an infected patient.

Another California patient received a kidney from the same person and also became infected. That patient survived.

“Ours is a complex system; someone who is committed to continuous improvement, monitoring and adaptation; It’s a place where thousands of people across the country come together every day to save lives,” UNOS CEO Brian Schepard told the Senate committee.

“A systems conference that started nearly 40 years ago and enabled us to better serve patients in need of transplants, thanks to the decisions and experiences of those who laid the foundations.”

However, there is little regulatory control over these transactions. UNOS is a private contractor employed by the government.

The business then moves to OPOs, which operate in every region without competition.

The process is unintelligible and without proper supervision it is easy to make mistakes – and if problems are noticed it is easy for groups to be blamed elsewhere.