Patient deaths, liver transplant failures spiked over 2 years at UC San Diego

Written by Megan Knowles |

June 28, 2018 |

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A surveillance report revealed that the liver transplant program at UC San Diego Health Center in Jacobs has shown more patient deaths and transplant failures than expected – but administrators say the peak is temporary, San Diego Union-Tribune reports.

Eight things to know:

1. Hospital treatment of many high-risk patients in 2016 resulted in an increase in the number of deaths and failures, but the results returned to expected levels in 2017 and 2018, according to a statement from the Union-Tribune . The results of 2017 and 2018 have not yet been made public.

2. The report, published by the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients in January, came less than two months after the university appointed a new director of the liver transplant program. The university replaced Alan Hemming, MD, by Kristin Mekeel, MD.

3. Dr. Hemming is still a member of the faculty of medicine at the university, but he does not treat any patients in any of his facilities, confirmed UC San Diego officials at the Union-Tribune . The directors did not specify whether there was a link between the register's report and recent program leadership changes.

4. From July 1, 2014 to December 31, 2016, liver transplant patients at UC San Diego suffered 13 failed transplants and 7 deaths during the first year after surgery, according to the report.

After taking the overall disease from the recipient and the donor considering a statistical modeling estimated at about seven transplant failures and five deaths would be expected for the 77 liver transplant patients that the program saw during the course of the period of 2 years and a half.

5. Although the gap between expected and observed transplant failures is not wide enough to be statistically significant, the 13 failures appear to be up the range of registry expectations, Union-Tribune reported.

The disparity between observed and expected rates of transplant failure and patient deaths has widened compared to the last report of the program, published in July.

6. In 2016, the program experienced a combined total of eight transplant failures or patient deaths in that year alone, according to a university administration release. But the two statistics do not exclude each other, say the administrators.

Since a transplant failure sometimes results in the death of a patient, and in other cases, a re-transplant operation, a patient may be considered a transplant failure. deaths in the registry statistics.

7. University administrators stated that they believed that these poor results – between zero and two transplant failures and / or expected patient deaths each year in a program the size of UC San Diego – are attributed to the poor health of Many patients who received transplants in 2016. [19659007] 8. University administrators said that the failure of the transplant program and the mortality rate have improved since 2016. Two patients of the program died after the failure of the transplant in 2017; one in February; another in September; The University and Dr. Hemming stated that the program was conducting more quality reviews on "all graft losses and all deaths occurring during one year of transplantation" and identified and implemented improvements.

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