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UCSF Medical Center gets OK to reopen living kidney donor transplant program
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UCSF Medical Center has been cleared to resume its living kidney donor transplant program after voluntarily suspending it in December because of the death of a donor, Victoria Colliver reported for the San Francisco Chronicle March 10.
According to a representative from the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), it is not uncommon for a transplant center to voluntarily shut down after a living donor death. The donor died in November after donating a kidney to his sister. UCSF officials told the Chronicle that the death was found to be “coincidental to, rather than caused by, the surgery.”
An autopsy determined that the 28 year old donor died from a lethal cardiac arrhythmia, Christopher Wirowek, deputy director of the medical examiner’s office told the Chronicle. Read the full article at SFGATE.com
The UCSF kidney transplant program is one of the busiest in the country. From 2010 through 2014, the center performed 1,772 kidney transplants. NN&I has been ranking the most active kidney transplant centers for more than a decade. The University of San Francisco Medical Center (UCSF) has been in the number one spot since 2009, and in the top five for many more years. But the difference between the top five is often minimal. In 2014, Jackson Memorial hospital in Miami was ranked number two, and performed only one less transplant than UCSF.
The program also has the longest kidney transplant waitlist.