Word: transplante
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...year-old Jesica Santillan was supposed to be one of the lucky ones. After years of living in pain brought on by her failing organs, the teenager finally matched with a heart-lung donor and was admitted to Duke University Medical Center in early February for a double-organ transplant. Thursday morning, after her body rejected the first set of new organs mistakenly implanted with the wrong blood type, Santillan lies in her hospital bed fighting for her life after a second implant procedure. Early reports indicate the second transplant has been successful; Jesica is given a 50 percent chance...
...Santillan, whose family was smuggled out of Mexico three years ago, spent the last several days close to death; after the first transplant, her type O-positive blood attacked the type A organs. Tuesday afternoon, her mother pleaded through the media for a new donor. "Please help me find the organs that my daughter needs to live," she said. Those pleas were answered late Wednesday night, when a new double-donor was identified...
...Duke spokesman Richard Puff says the medical center accepts full responsibility for the "tragic" mistake and has already implemented new safety procedures - including a triple-layer system to check blood type matching - to ensure this kind of error will never happen again. The hospital, which performed its first organ transplant in 1965 and now performs the most lung transplants in the country, says there has never been a donor mix-up at the facility before. According to Puff, the investigation is ongoing, and there is no word when the hospital will release new findings on the cause of the error...
...Still, the Santillan tragedy will prompt transplant patients and their families to wonder, now more than ever, how they can guard against potentially fatal medical errors. As any patient knows, it's bad enough going into the hospital; the last thing you want to worry about is doctors or support staff making a disastrous mistake. John Schochor, an attorney in Baltimore and Washington, D.C. who specializes in medical malpractice cases, offers this advice, not only to transplant patients, but to anyone entering a hospital for an invasive procedure...
...expertise of outside writers we admire. In this issue: Dr. Andrew Weil, writing about alternative treatments for anxiety, depression and other disorders; M.I.T. psychology professor Steven Pinker on the intricate relationship between genes and behavior; Dr. Mehmet Oz on how he uses meditation to speed the recovery of heart-transplant patients at New York City's Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center. We also had the pleasure of collaborating on this project with our friends at ABC World News Tonight, who will be airing two segments related to our Mind/Body issue, on Monday, Jan. 13, and Tuesday...