In a search for life saving heart-lung transplant, a Mexican teenager was brought to the US,by her parents.But because of organs of wrong blood grouping reaching her she collapsed on Feb 22 2006.The 17 year old Jesica Santillan,died at the Duke University Medical School in Durham, NC.There was a desperate and heroic attempt to rectify the mistake with a second transplant,but Jessica didn’t survive.
The great number of medical errors that occurs in the US hospitals every year has once again caught the attention of the media.The US policy for transplanting foreign non-residents has also started an intense debate, with the news of the mix-up .
James Jaggers,MD,the pediatric transplant surgeon who had known Jesica for 2 years and performed the transplant, took full responsibility for accepting the mismatched organs. Jaggers said in a written statement “As Jessica's surgeon, I had hoped that when we were offered organs from the donor service, that Jesica would be one of those lucky few-that we would prolong and improve her life with a heart-lung transplant,". Unfortunately, in this case human errors were made during the process. As Jesica's surgeon I am ultimately responsible for the team and for this error.I personally told the Santillan family about the errors that were made and then tried to do everything medically possible to treat Jesica and try to save her life."
A surgery, which was to save the life, ended up taking away life
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