Well, to be fair, ending your life is definitely changing it. But man, that’s harsh.
Wow. How tragic.
If I were on the jury, I would not be able to side with the plaintiffs, if the uterine cancer was unknown to be in the woman when the transplant was conducted. That is the risk you take with a transplanted organ.
And why pray tell are not organs screened for diseases before being transplanted?
Just asking.
Whoa - never heard of this happening before. Strange. Tragic.
That’s one of the big worries with cancer, metastasis. I’m surprised there’s a trial though. The guy decided to keep the kidney, and they found the donor’s cancer mere days after the transplant.
I am very confused here - I thought that the danger of cancer was that the cells were one’s own so that the immune system doesn’t recognize them as foreign.
“...is believed to be the only reported instance of uterine cancer apparently being transmitted by transplant, medical experts say.”
That’s strange. Scientists studying cancer inject lab mice with cancer cells all the time to give them cancer so they can study various ways to trying to stop it. Why should it be a surprise here with human beings?
RIP.
Somewhere, 1000 trial lawyers just got a boner.
On January 31, 2009 my brother died after an 11-month long painful struggle from a yeast infection that he contracted from his kidney transplant on March 17,2008. His surgeons discovered that he had contracted the life-threatening infection 8 days after his kidney transplant surgery, and although it was dangerous, they convinced him to keep the kidney. They would fight the infection since they were unclear if he would get the chance to have another kidney or survive the surgery to remove it ... they wanted the transplant to be a success. Either way, they wanted to keep it in against the odds and told us they would take it out if they felt they needed to.
This was a highly trained and intelligent team of doctors whom we trusted. My brother was walking and living on his own the day before the transplant, which he waited 5 years for! He went through numerous painful procedures and surgeries to fight the yeast, becoming so numb that they didn't even take him into the OR to clean out the kidney, just did it at the bedside where he could watch. The infection spread throughout his body and even when we asked them to remove it, they were still confident they could beat it.
Well, they killed the yeast but it was too late to take out the kidney and they killed the kidney as well; his body just started shutting down. After 11 months of tremendous pain and struggling, he died in a small local hospital where he begged us to transfer him to be closer to home. He died with congestive heart failure, on dialysis, suffering from malnutrition due to his inability to digest protein because his liver and stomach had failed as well. He had lost some of his veins after so many months; he lost an artery in his leg as well, until finally he died after numerous surgeries trying to repair all of the damage his body had taken.
IT IS SIMPLY A MATTER OF BETTER SCREENING AND ASKING A FEW MORE QUESTIONS IN THE QUESTIONAIRE ABOUT BEING AN ORGAN DONOR. You see, his donor had a history of yeast infections and urinary tract infections, and when he was put on the anti-rejection meds it brought the infection to life. The doctors didn't see the yeast in the biopsy of the donor because it was deep inside but knew they should have looked better into the medical history. It was in her records and they said that they should have known not to take it. TRANSPLANTATION IS BIG BUSINESS NOW AND THEY NEED TO BE MORE CAREFUL. I work in a hospital and am for transplantation, but for better screening so that no one has to suffer like my brother did. We knew the risks, but not this one, and listened to the surgeons when they said we can fight this. BE AWARE AND LOOK FOR BETTER SCREENING.