Kidney donors had HBV, syphilis

Kidney donors had HBV, syphilis

Uwajima Municipal Hospital performed risky transplants on 4 patients

The Yomiuri Shimbun
Japan

2-17-07

Kidneys taken from patients who tested positive for hepatitis B, syphilis or suffered infectious kidney abscesses were transplanted in four operations at Uwajima Municipal Hospital in Uwajima, Ehime Prefecture, The Yomiuri Shimbun learned Friday.

Medical experts, who are investigating the transplants by doctor Makoto Mannami of Uwajima Tokushukai Hospital in the city and other doctors, described the hospital's actions as "unbelievable," pointing out that recipients are required to take immune suppressants, which make them highly susceptible to infectious diseases.

According to sources, blood from a patient whose kidneys were removed due to nephrosis in December 2000 at Uwajima Municipal Hospital and died a few months later, tested positive for the hepatitis B virus.

When the virus spreads throughout a patient's body, the disease becomes chronic and the patient is likely to suffer liver cancer or liver cirrhosis.

Two patients, who each received a kidney from the donor, have survived, but when the transplants were made at the hospital, they were not screened for hepatitis B.

In November 1995, the hospital took out an abscessed kidney from a woman in her 70s and transplanted it into another patient.

Abscessed kidneys are maturated due to bacterial infections and other reasons.

The transplanted kidney started to fail and the recipient had to undergo dialysis about a month later.

A medical expert said: "I personally doubt that a kidney that was so damaged that it needed to be taken out could be transplanted to other patients. It is highly likely that her kidney was also resistant to antibiotics and so could not be treated and may even have been infected with drug-resistant viruses."

In 2003, a kidney was removed from a man with cancer at the Mihara Red Cross Hospital in Mihara, Hiroshima Prefecture. The man tested positive for syphilitic antibodies. He later died.

According to the man's doctor, the man had been suspected of testing positive for syphilis, so the doctor carried out several tests and concluded that the antibodies developed when the man became infected in his youth and there was no pathogen in his body at the time. "So I offered the kidney for transplant," the doctor said.

When organs are transplanted, those taken from a person suffering infectious diseases are usually not used.

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/20070217TDY02013.htm