Houston transplant programme halted amid allegations that surgeon in charge secretly made patients ineligible

The kidney and liver transplantation programmes of a major hospital in Houston, Texas, have been suspended while authorities investigate claims that the surgeon in charge changed patients’ donor acceptance criteria to make them ineligible.The physician, who has been identified by the New York Times as J Steve Bynon Jr, made “inappropriate changes” that “effectively inactivated the candidates on the liver transplant waiting list,” Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center said in a statement.These changes involved setting criteria to make it seem that recipients were only willing to take organs from impossible donor candidates, such as 300 lb (136 kg) toddlers, a hospital source told the Houston Chronicle.The hospital’s statement did not name the doctor but said he had admitted to tampering with the records. All the changes affected the liver transplant programme, but the hospital has also shut down its larger kidney programme, it said in its statement, because of a “shared…
Read Original Article: Houston transplant programme halted amid allegations that surgeon in charge secretly made patients ineligible »