Posted on 07/05/2007 11:34:16 AM PDT by Bronco_Buster_FweetHyagh
The mother of a San Luis Obispo man who died after an attempted organ donation at Sierra Vista Regional Medical Center last year claims she never gave hospital officials consent to take her son off life-support and was misinformed when agreeing to the organ harvest, according to a wrongful death lawsuit.
Rosa Navarro also alleges in her June 29 civil lawsuit that a transplant surgeon misrepresented himself as her son’s doctor, an allegation the surgeon’s attorney strongly denies. She also said she agreed to the organ donation only because she believed her son had no chance of survival.
Defendants in the lawsuit — the San Luis Obispo hospital; its parent company, Dallas-based Tenet Corp.; the California Transplant Donor Network; transplant physicians Hootan Roozrokh and Arturo Martinez; and their employer, The Permanente Medical Group Inc.—are accused of assault, battery, fraud, civil conspiracy, negligence, medical malpractice and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
Sierra Vista hospital on Tuesday denied any wrongdoing in the Feb. 4, 2006, death of 25-year-old Ruben Navarro.
Rosa Navarro, 54, is asking for unlimited compensation in the death of her son.
Ruben Navarro, who was dying of a rare metabolic disorder, had been on life support for four days and was expected to die. His mother agreed to donate his organs, and the California Transplant Donor Network dispatched its transplant team to Sierra Vista.
Rosa Navarro said during an interview from her Oxnard home Tuesday that when she arrived at the hospital she asked about her son’s condition. She said a hospital nurse told her to speak with the doctor.
“He came over and approached me and said I’m in charge of Ruben,” Navarro said of Roozrokh, who was part of the surgical team from San Francisco dispatched by Oakland-based Organ Transplant Donor Network.
“I asked him, ‘Doctor could you do anything for my boy?’ and he said, ‘Oh, no. Oh no… There’s nothing I can do for a patient like him.’ ”
Navarro said through sobs that Roozrokh asked her if she planned to watch him disconnect her son from life-support.
“He didn’t even ask me, ‘What do you want me to do Ms. Navarro? Do you want me to keep him on the machine or whatever?’ ” Navarro said.
Roozrokh’s attorney, M. Gerry Schwartzbach, told The Tribune on Tuesday that his client never spoke with Rosa Navarro and was not in charge of her son’s medical care.
“He did not have any conversation with her with regard to taking Ruben off the respirator. … Dr. Roozrokh was in the Bay Area,” Schwartzbach said. “I feel very bad for Ms. Navarro because she’s going through a great deal, but unfortunately someone misled her because she never met (Roozrokh) and she never spoke to him. That is absolutely clear.”
Schwartzbach said a local physician made the decision to remove Ruben Navarro from life support.
Ruben Navarro was brought into the operating room at 11 p.m. Feb. 3, 2006, and his breathing tube was removed. But he did not die within 30 minutes—the window during which organs could be harvested. He died nine hours later, according to the lawsuit.
An operating-room nurse reported that standard medical procedures weren’t followed when Navarro was taken off life support.
The lawsuit alleges Roozrokh ordered Ruben Navarro be given lethal doses of morphine and Ativan, an accusation also reported as a finding in a federal investigation by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
The report showed an intensive care nurse gave Ruben Navarro 220 milligrams of morphine and 80 milligrams of Ativan.
Sierra Vista spokesman Ron Yukelson did not respond to specific allegations against the hospital.
He did say a surgeon contracted with the donor network assumed responsibility for Navarro in violation of hospital policy, which requires a doctor to be credentialed by the hospital to treat a living patient.
District attorney’s investigators have been reviewing the case since March, but have made no decision about filing criminal charges.
“It’s a very unique case. No one’s prosecuted a case like this anywhere,” Assistant District Attorney Dan Hilford said Tuesday. “The case is very complex and deals with issues that require a great deal of research and study.”
State Medical Board spokeswoman Candis Cohen said the agency is investigating Roozrokh.
Martinez, the other doctor on the transplant team, could not be reached for comment.
That's obviously true. Even when you add in the involuntary "donors" there still aren't enough organs to go around. Maybe we just need to make it mandatory for everyone. /s
It's basic economics. Price controls=shortages. In this case, the price is set at zero.
Not necessarily. One of my relatives suffered a brain injury, not far from home. He was brought into a hospital far away, as a John Doe, because his wallet was missing. One of the officers took it off him at the scene, and "misplaced" it, until he was breathing on his own. He's also the one who arranged for him to be transported to a hospital far away, which made it hard for his wife to find him. (The officer knew they were going through a messy, violent divorce, as he'd been called out to break up fights a couple times). After he came out of his coma and was breathing on his own, the officer "found" the wallet, and the family was contacted. It turns out the hospital couldn't arbitrarily refuse him treatment, or harvest his organs. They would have needed family approval, or a court order. The officer who "lost" his wallet knew this. God bless him!
“You have been watching way too many science fiction movies. “
No, just watching suits like this and talking to the medical community for years. Reality is that many organ donors have been lied to - they end up being murdered for body parts for sale. A terrible moral wrong.
I absolutely agree with you...it is hard to fathom that conservatives such as freepers would ever oppose organ donation....the idea that doctors would intentionally cause your death to get your organs is preposterous
...the idea that doctors would intentionally cause your death to get your organs is preposterousIs it? Transplant List Funny Business?
Three hospitals diagnosed some patients as more ill than they were in order to hasten their liver transplants, state and federal officials said Monday.One patient at the University of Illinois Medical Center who was certified as seven days from death was discovered in a hospital lobby wearing a clown costume and putting on a show to support a blood drive, officials said.
Some patients were unnecessarily placed in intensive care and were diagnosed as far sicker than they were, officials said.
I don't think that's the main reason for the shortage, though it probably plays a big part. I think it has more to do with the unethical way organ donors are sometimes treated. I would love to donate my organs, after I'm done with them. But I don't want anyone taking them while I'm still using them, or killing me so they can take them. And I think a lot of people agree with that.
I did not stereotype anyone as a butcher. But I stand by my statement that anyone who kills someone to cut them up for parts is a butcher. Are you saying that’s the way your brother-in-law does it?
207 + 208 - Well said!~
“Are you saying that’s the way your brother-in-law does it?”
Don’t post to me again.
Maybe you should make that your screen name. Is there anyone left that’s allowed to post to you?
ROTFLMAO!
“Is there anyone left that’s allowed to post to you?”
plenty - people interested in real discussion who aren’t just trying to start a flame war by insulting my family.
Publication: Los Angeles Business Journal
Date: Monday, October 3 2005
Organ Scandal: St. Vincent Medical Center, one of the largest organ transplant centers in the state, suspended its liver program after discovering that its doctors improperly arranged for a transplant to a Saudi national using an organ that should have gone to a higher priority patient. Hospital
staff members then falsified documents to cover up the alleged maneuver, hospital Chief Executive Gus Valdespino confirmed. The transplant took place in September 2003 and was paid for by the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Who insulted your family? You did, when you lumped your brother-in-law in with the butchers who kill people for their organs, and take their organs while they’re still alive. I didn’t accuse your bil of that. You’re the one who claimed he was one of the unethical butchers I was referring to. For all I know, he might be one of the ethical members of a transplant team, who doesn’t engage in those practices. But you know him, and I don’t.
Freep-mail me to get on or off my pro-life and Catholic Ping List:
Please ping me to all note-worthy Pro-Life or Catholic threads, or other threads of interest.
Publication: Issues in Law & Medicine Date: Friday, April 1 2005Be afraid, be VERY afraid.
Courtney S. Campbell, Harvesting the Living? Separating Brain Death and Organ Transplantation, 14 KENNEDY INST. ETHICS J. 301 (2004).
The chronic shortage of transplantable organs has reached critical proportions. In the wake of this crisis, some bioethicists have argued that there is sufficient public support to expand organ recovery through use of neocortical criteria of death or even pre-mortem organ retrieval. The author presents a typology of ways in which data gathered from the public can be misread or selectively used by bioethicists in service of an ideological or policy agenda, resulting in bad policy and bad ethics. Such risks should lead us to look at alternatives for increasing organ supplies short of expanding or abandoning the dead donor rule. The chronic problem of organ scarcity should prompt bioethicists to engage in constructive dialogue about the relation of the social sciences and bioethics, to examine the social malleability of the definition of death, and to revisit the question of the priority of organ transplants in the overall package of healthcare benefits provided to most, but not all, citizens.
Where did I “insult” your family?
oh sure...I said my bil is a butcher - that’s right!
What a piece of work!
You obviously want to fight with someone and I’m too tired and have no interest....good night.
“oh sure...I said my bil is a butcher - that’s right!”
In fact, you essentially did. There are a few who remove organs from the dead - corneal transplants are usually done that way, as an example. Those who “harvest” organs while there is brain activity, them be butchers.
I have to disagree with you; while ER docs may not be front and center on this, I’ve seen too many overly aggressive transplant teams to recommend that anyone sign an organ donor card...and, for the record, transplant surgeons make a very nice living.
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