Our health care in ten years?
From the
UK Independent:
Woman died after being given smoker's lungs
The Government's "transplant tsar" insisted today that organ transplants were carried out on the basis of whether they would work - after it emerged that a cystic fibrosis sufferer died after receiving the lungs of a long-term smoker.
Chris Rudge, national clinical director for transplantation, said smoking was not the "issue" in the case of cystic fibrosis sufferer Lyndsey Scott, whose family have lodged a complaint after she received a double lung transplant from a 30-year smoker.
The prognosis on Cystic Fibrosis is not good but still, giving her the lungs of someone who was an active smoker for 30 years?
Oh yeah -- this tidbit stuck out at me too:
Her family were reported to have found out that the lungs came from a long-term smoker after applying for the medical notes on the operation.
They had to apply to see the surgeons notes? Jeez -- over here, it's freely available, not hidden away behind some bureaucratic firewall.
Posted by DaveH at June 15, 2010 10:51 PM