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Kobe International Frontier Medical Center (KIFMC), a hospital that opened in Kobe City last November, says that four out of seven patients who underwent surgery and received a transplanted liver from a family member or compatible donor died within one month following their procedures.
The seven transplants were carried out by three doctors between December and March, Fuji TV reported Wednesday. The hospital said two of the patients were Indonesian and two were Japanese. Two of the patients were under the age of 15.
Last month, the Japanese Liver Transplant Research Association was put in charge of conducting an investigation into the matter by the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare.
Center director Dr Koichi Tanaka, who has conducted over 2,000 live-donor liver transplant surgeries, told reporters he did not believe that there had been a mistake on the side of KIFMC, but said the institution planned on fully cooperating with the investigation to get to the bottom of the matter as quickly as possible.
© Japan Today
8 Comments
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Disillusioned
So, why did they die? Was it a staff infection? Foreign material left in the body? What?
misunderstood
Dr. Dillusion you added the conclusion? Now What?
Short and Bitter
Brace for massive denial of personal responsibility. Brace for lies.
HongoTAFEinmate
he did not believe that there had been a mistake on the side of KIFMC
Whose he kidding. "Four out of seven patients" is a mortality rate of over 50%. The good doctor might have excellent personal surgery skills, but short of all of these patients having outrageous co-morbidities, something sounds not right.
Black Sabbath
Kobe International Frontier Medical Center:
On the frontier of closing since November 2014!
Fadamor
The size of this sample is entirely too small to be making mortality rate declarations. There are many factors involved with the potential success or failure of a liver transplant, so assuming these seven patients all had EXACTLY the same degree of disease and complications is "bad science". The hospital might have been simply unlucky in that four of the first seven were extremely difficult patients. Let's let the review board make the determination rather than a bunch of laymen on a news website.
chikv
Its impossible to know what happened without the results of an investigation, but there are explanations for this kind of troubles in new hospitals. For all we know the surgeons could be too optimistic or compassionate, under a lot of pressure to perform surgeries or the director is comfortable about having bad numbers. All of these reasons would lead them to accept patients that would be rejected everywhere else because of the risk of death (no hospital wants to have this kind of publicity). If this is the case it would look very bad on numbers but there would be no problem to solve (unless you consider rejecting patients a solution).
Still, an investigation is surely warranted to be sure that there is no other reasons involved.
onagagamo
I gave up with Japanese doctors years ago! It's a lottery.