Posted on 02/23/2003 2:11:41 AM PST by kattracks
DURHAM, N.C. - The teenager who was put through a second heart-lung transplant after the first was botched died yesterday.Jesica Santillan, 17, was declared brain dead at 1:25 p.m. and taken off life-support machines about 5 p.m., said Duke University Medical Center spokesman Richard Puff.
She was kept on life support through the afternoon so family and friends could say goodbye, the hospital said in a statement.
Medicine to keep her heart going was discontinued at 5 p.m. Her heart stopped seven minutes later and a ventilator then was turned off.
Renee McCormick, a spokeswoman for a charity created to pay Jesica's medical bills, said the Santillan family didn't know until then that doctors were taking her off life support.
"They were hysterical," McCormick said. "The family's been treated so poorly. They're very hurt. These are human beings."
A family lawyer said hours earlier they didn't want to remove Jesica from life support until an outside doctor verified she was brain dead. The lawyer could not be reached last night.
The Santillan family declined to donate any organs from Jesica's body, Puff said. Although the newest organs transplanted into Jesica were performing well, her brain began swelling and bleeding shortly after the second transplant, doctors said.
Jesica had been in a coma since the first transplant Feb. 7. Her health deteriorated as her body rejected the donor organs, which didn't match her blood type. By the time a match was found and new organs were transplanted early Thursday, she was in critical condition.
No double-check
Duke Hospital has acknowledged its fault in the original transplant, in which Dr. James Jaggers implanted organs from a donor with A blood that were incompatible with Jesica's O-positive blood.
Hospital CEO Dr. William Fulkerson said Jaggers wrongly assumed compatibility had been confirmed when he was offered the organs, and later failed to double-check that assumption, a violation of procedures.
In his first public remarks, Jaggers said yesterday he had hoped Jesica would be "one of those lucky few" awaiting heart-lung procedures who actually get the transplants and do well.
"Unfortunately, in this case, human errors were made during the process" to match the organs with the patient, he said in a statement released by Duke.
Duke officials explained the error in a letter to the United Network for Organ Sharing, which matches patients with donated organs. The letter was signed by Fulkerson and Dr. Duane Davis, director of Duke's lung transplant program. They said Jaggers declined the organs for one patient but asked a donor group whether they were available for Jesica. The organs were offered to Davis, who declined because they were the wrong size for his patient, then offered to Jaggers for Jesica.
Relatives have said Jesica's family paid a smuggler to bring them from their small town near Guadalajara, Mexico, to the U.S. so she could get medical care.
Can't be done. They are barely able to be used one time.
She is with God now.
I didn't, but it sounds reasonable. Organ donors are hard to come by, plus organs have a very short window of time in which they are viable. I don't know if anyone has a "right" to transplanted organs, but if a person shows up and needs one, and you've got one that suits them, I won't object no matter what their nationality.
Don't believe me? Read the authorizations and contracts between patient, family, and medical center...in this case Duke University.
Furthermore, would *you*, or any of your children want to receive an organ from her *after* her body was host to non-capatible organs, which affected her brain (swelling)?
You get what you pay for! Why the hell was this even allowed in the first place when we have AMERICANS waiting for organs?
God forbid this doctor has to actually take time to correctly do surgery. It might raise the cost of the rest of our botched surgeries.
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