Woman received lungs of a 30-year smoker
As a medical malpractice lawyer, I am horrified by the following story. Each year medical negligence costs too many lives, and this sad story is just one among many very disheartening examples.
The family of a “28-year-old British woman who was a cystic fibrosis sufferer and unknowingly received a lung transplant from a smoker says she would have been "horrified" and have lodged a complaint.” (London AP, 6/15). Unfortunately, she passed of pneumonia just a few months after the faulty transplant.
Britain's top transplant official Chris Rudge even defended the transplant asserting that patients know they are not getting “brand new” lungs. He further asserted on the BBC that "lungs from a smoker can be working perfectly normally." While it is true that transplanted organs are obviously not new, transplanting lungs into a cystic fibrosis patient from a long time smoker is absurd.
The victims family is not lobbying for patients to be more thoroughly informed about organ donors before accepting a transplant.
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