Live-donor kidney transplants on hold at Children's Hospital

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Live-donor kidney transplants on hold at Children's Hospital

Saturday, May 28, 2011
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Children's Hospital is temporarily unable to do live-donor kidney transplants because it uses adult organs from the UPMC program, which has been suspended.

Children's spokesman Mark Lukasiak said that there are no live-donor transplants scheduled, and therefore the hospital has taken no action. He said there have been no problems in the Children's program.

"We didn't suspend or shut down. We have taken no action. It's just that without UPMC we can't complete [live-donor kidney] transplants."

The live-donor liver transplant program continues to operate uninterrupted, as do deceased-donor programs.

UPMC suspended its live-donor kidney transplant program earlier this month after discovering that a patient received a kidney from a donor with hepatitis C. It suspended its live-donor liver transplant program as a precaution.



Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11148/1150065-53.stm#ixzz1NhzhoXGh