Organ Transplant: Court Throws Out Lawsuit Over Use Of Donor Organs With Cytomegalovirus CMV
Legal Eagle Eye Newsletter for the Nursing Profession
Request a complimentary copy of our current issue
December 1996
Quick Summary: Considering the recipient’s emergent need and the scarcity of available transplant organs, it is not accepted practice automatically to reject donor organs because they are from a donor infected with CMV.
It is not universal practice to discuss donor organs’ CMV status with the donor’s family prior to transplant, if sound medical judgment indicates a need to go ahead promptly with the transplant. UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT, NEW YORK, 1996.
One heart and lung set were deemed unacceptable for a five-year-old recipient, and the transplant did not proceed. The surgeon explained to the mother that a set of organs, "have to be clean, perfect, nothing, no spots, no diseases, no viruses" for a transplant to go ahead.
Five months later another donor was available, who just prior to death had received a blood transfusion positive for CMV. The surgeon accepted the organs with this knowledge and went ahead with the transplant, without discussing the donor’s CMV status with the recipient’s mother, and the recipient died from CMV.
The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York threw out the mother’s lawsuit against the surgeon and hospital. It ruled it was not necessary, under the circumstances, to have sought the mother’s informed consent for use of these organs.
Good vs. Hospital, 934 F. Supp. 107 (S.D.N.Y., 1996).