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Kidney misplaced as transplant patient waits By Jim Fitzgerald ASSOCIATED PRESS VALHALLA, N.Y. - The transplant team was just about to put the patient under when the operation had to be postponed. The healthy new kidney, it seemed, was missing. Someone, it turns out, had thrown it in the trash. The organ was found - in a recycling bin - within 90 minutes, and the operation went forward. Yesterday, two days after the initial surgery, the organ was removed because it was "not working properly," Westchester Medical Center said in a statement. But Kristine Smith, spokeswoman for the state Health Department, said the malfunction had nothing to do with the mix-up. "The outcome for the patient depends on a number of factors that have nothing to do with this," she said. Dr. Khalid Butt, who performed yesterday's operation, said the 67-year-old patient "will be fine." Hospital officials declined to elaborate. The organ had been in the operating room, on ice, wrapped in four layers of plastic inside a polystyrene box, ready to help save the life of a man with kidney failure. But the operating room had been cleaned and the kidney was gone as the minutes were ticking away. A kidney from a cadaver, like this one, can be preserved on ice for about 48 hours, and 36 hours had passed. The patient, a New York man who spent the last year on dialysis, was told there would be a delay. He was not told why. "There was no reason to at that point," said Carin Grossman, a hospital spokeswoman. An hour and a half went by as the hospital was searched. Finally, the kidney was found. The container "was thought to be simply an empty corrugated box and therefore placed in the recycling receptacle for clean cardboard," the hospital said yesterday in a statement. But the spokeswoman said the box was clearly labeled, with "something like 'Organ for Transplant.' " The kidney was still viable when found, the hospital said, and was "successfully" implanted. Both the medical center, which leads New York state in the number of kidney transplants performed each year, and the Health Department are investigating. The patient's daughter, Gloria Kocal, said she was told her father would now return to dialysis treatment. She said he may have reservations about undergoing a third operation. "I don't know if my father wants to re-put his name on the list after all he went through," Kocal said. | |||||||||||||||||
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