A man who was declared dead was about to undergo surgery to donate his organs, but he was still alive: Shot

Natasha Miller said she was preparing to work to preserve the donor's organs for transplant when nurses wheeled him into the operating room in a wheelchair.

She knew right away that something was wrong. Although the donor had been declared dead, he seemed very much alive to her.

“He was moving around, kind of flopping around, flailing around on the bed, writhing around,” Miller said in an interview with NPR. “And when we got there, we saw him in tears. He was visibly crying.”

The donor's condition worried everyone in the operating room at Baptist Health Hospital in Richmond, Kentucky, she said, including two doctors who refused to participate in organ retrieval.

“The surgeon who did the surgery was like, 'This is it.' I don't want anything to do with it,” Miller says. “It was a very chaotic situation. Everyone was very upset.”

Miller said she spoke with a case coordinator at her employer's hospital. Kentucky Organ Donation Affiliate (KODA), call your boss and ask for advice.

“So, the coordinator calls the supervisor at the time, and she says he told her that she needed to “find another doctor to take on it,'' which meant, “We were going to take on this case.” ” she said. She needs to find someone else,” Miller says. “And she says, 'There's no one else.' She's the coordinator, and she's crying because she's being yelled at.”

“Everyone's worst nightmare”

Organ harvesting was halted. However, some KODA employees, including another organ preservation activist, Nicoletta Martin, have said they have since resigned because of the October 2021 incident.

“I have dedicated my entire life to organ donation and transplantation, and it's very scary to me now that this is being allowed to happen and there is no protection for the donor,” Martin said. says.

Although Martin wasn't assigned to the operating room that day, he thought he might be drafted into the military. So she started reviewing her case notes from earlier in the day. When doctors tried to examine the donor's heart, they became concerned when they discovered that the donor showed signs of life.

“The donor woke up that morning in surgery for a cardiac catheterization, and he was thrashing around on the table,” Martin says.

Cardiac catheterization is performed on people who want to donate their organs to assess whether their heart is healthy enough to go to someone who needs a new heart.

Martin said that when the patient woke up, doctors would administer a sedative and plans were underway to retrieve his organs.

Martin said KODA officials subsequently downplayed the incident. She was disappointed to hear that, she says.

“That's everyone's worst nightmare, right? Being alive during surgery and knowing that someone is going to cut you open and take out your body parts?” Martin says. “That's scary.”

patient

Donna Lawler of Richmond, Kentucky, told NPR that her 36-year-old brother, Anthony Thomas “TJ” Huber II, was the patient involved in the incident. She said he was rushed to the hospital for a drug overdose.

Lawler was in the hospital that day. When TJ appeared to open his eyes and look around as he was being driven from the intensive care unit to the operating room, he became concerned that something was wrong.

“It was like his way of letting us know, 'Hey, I'm still here,'” Lawler said in an interview with NPR.

But Lawlor said she and other family members were told what they saw was just a common reflex. TJ Hoover currently lives with Lawler, and she is his legal guardian.

TJ Hoover danced with his sister Donna on her wedding day in May 2023, more than a year after he was wrongly declared dead.

Hoover Roller family

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Hoover Roller family

The case was outlined in a letter from Nicoletta Martin to the House Energy and Commerce Committee in September. Hearing to investigate organ procurement organizations. She later provided additional details about the incident to NPR.

“Some of us who were employees had to go to therapy. It took a toll on a lot of people, especially me,” Martin told NPR.

Under investigation

The Kentucky Attorney General's Office said in a statement to NPR that investigators are “reviewing” the allegations.

The federal Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), which helps oversee organ procurement, said in a statement to NPR that the agency is “investigating these allegations.” Some people involved in the case also told NPR that they answered questions from the Office of the Inspector General at the federal Department of Health and Human Services, but none of the agency's federal officials have commented on the case.

Baptist Health Richmond; hospitals in kentucky The location where the incident allegedly occurred told NPR in a statement:

“Patient safety is always our top priority. We work closely with patients and their families to ensure that their wishes for organ donation are honored.”

“It’s not accurately expressed.”

Organ procurement organization KODA confirmed that Miller was assigned to the operating room for the case. But the group told NPR, “This incident is not accurately represented.

According to a statement from Julie Bergin, president and chief operating officer of Network for Hope, which was formed when KODA merged with LifeCenter Organ Donor Network, “No one at KODA harvests organs from living patients. “I was never pressured to do so.” “KODA does not harvest organs from living patients. KODA has never pressured any team member to do so.”

Organ procurement system officials and transplant surgeons said strict protocols are in place to prevent unsafe organ retrieval.

“Incidents like this are concerning and we hope they are properly reported and evaluated.” dolly dilspresident of Organ Procurement Organization Federationhe said in an interview with NPR. “And obviously we want to make sure that individuals are actually dying when organ donation is taking place. And we want to give the public confidence that that's actually happening. I want it. The process is sacred.”

The accusations, revealed at a Congressional hearing in September, have undermined confidence in the organ donation system and led to fewer people registering as donors. According to an open letter published by the organization on October 3,.

“Our Nation's Organ Procurement Organization (OPO), a nonprofit, community-based organization that works with grieving families every day to save lives through transplants, has been fighting malicious misinformation and “We have been subject to defamatory attacks based on hearsay, creating a false narrative that donations and transplants in the United States are unreliable and broken,” the letter said.

Others worry that such alarming reports could undermine the organ transplant system.

“These are scary stories, and I think we need to monitor them closely,” he says. Robert Truga professor of medical ethics, anesthesiology, and pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, and a critical care physician at Boston Children's Hospital.

“But I don't want the public to believe that this is a serious problem. These are really one-off incidents and hopefully we can get to the bottom of it and prevent it from happening again.” ,” Trugue said.

103,000 people waiting for transplant

Some critics of the organ procurement system say they were not at all surprised by the allegations. Over 103,000 people participated waiting list In the case of transplants, organ procurement organizations are under tremendous pressure to increase the number of organs they obtain in order to save more lives. Additionally, debate continues over how to declare a patient dead.

“While we hope that incidents like this are truly extreme, they highlight some of the fundamental problems that can arise when there is disagreement over the determination of death,” he says. Matthew DeCampassociate professor of medicine and bioethicist at the University of Colorado.

But some wonder if something like this rarely happens.

“This doesn't appear to be a one-time bad apple,” says owner Greg Segal. sort outorgan transplant system monitoring group. “I receive such allegations with alarming regularity.”

Similarly, Thaddeus Pope“I don't think it's a good thing,” said a bioethicist and lawyer who studies organ donation at Mitchell Hamline School of Law in St. Paul. similar accusation reported elsewhere.

“This is not a one-off,” Pope said. “It is said that something like this has happened before.”

Another near miss description

Dr. robert cannonThe University of Alabama at Birmingham transplant surgeon said a similar incident occurred during the Congressional hearing where Martin's letter was made public. The incident occurred at a hospital in rural Alabama.

“We were actually in the operating room. We were actually opening up the patient's body and preparing the organs, and at that point the ventilator turned on and we were at the head of the table. “The anesthesiologist who was there spoke up and said, 'Hey, I think this patient was just breathing,'” Cannon later said in an interview with NPR. “If the patient is breathing, that means they are not brain dead.”

Despite this, OPO representatives wanted to proceed anyway, Cannon said. he refused.

“We were kind of shocked that the OPO people had so little knowledge of what brain death meant and would say, 'Oh, we should just keep going.' And we said, 'No. ” I thought. We're not going to risk killing our patients. 'Because that's what would happen if that patient were alive. ”

“Why me?”

Since TJ was released from the hospital, his sister Donna Lawler said her brother has had problems with memory, walking and speaking.

When she asked TJ what happened, he said, “Why me?”

“I do feel angry,” Lawler said.

“We feel betrayed by the fact that the people who told us he was brain-dead have since woken up,” Lawler said. “They're trying to play God. They're almost, you know, picking and choosing — they're going to bring in this person to save these people. And , you lose a little bit of faith in humanity.”