UCLA takes displaced patients

The UCLA Medical Center may be receiving a number of new liver
transplant patients after the UC Irvine liver transplant program
shut down last Thursday.

The Irvine center was closed after the federal government pulled
its certification and funding because the medical center had not
met federal standards.

The 106 patients who were at UCI will be transferred to one of
the five transplant centers in Southern California, one of the
options being the UCLA Medical Center.

Dale Tate, a UCLA spokeswoman, said she does not currently know
how many patients the medical center will be asked to take and the
university is awaiting further information.

But the medical center “can and will” accommodate
patients who choose to be transferred to UCLA, she said.

The influx of new patients will not affect the waiting time for
the current 674 UCLA patients, said Bryan Stewart, director of
communications at OneLegacy, a nonprofit organization that works
with the federal government to acquire organs for patients in the
Southern California region.

“The fact that (UCI patients) are changing doesn’t
affect where (UCLA patients) are on the list,” Stewart
said.

A patient’s position on the list depends on the urgency of
need, not the time they signed up for an organ.

The UCI liver transplant program has been riddled with problems
for the past four years.

More than 30 people have died waiting for a liver in the last
two years, the Los Angeles Times reported shortly before the
federal government withdrew funding for the center.

The center turned down hundreds of livers that were later used
by other hospitals, according to the Times article.

The program also failed to keep up with government standards. It
had not met the minimum required number of surgeries per year, and
its patients’ 68.6 percent survival rate after transplants
was below the 77 percent federal standard, according to a letter
Medicare’s Chronic Care Policy Group Director Laurence Wilson
wrote, informing UCI of the decision to terminate the program.

According to federal records, UCI only transplanted 12 of the
122 livers that were offered between August 2004 and July 2005.

The problems at UCI have been attributed, in large part, to the
lack of doctors to operate the transplants.

In the letter, Wilson said the center has not employed a
full-time surgeon since July 2004.

Before the program closed Thursday, it only had two part-time
doctors who were based at UC San Diego, roughly 90 miles away from
UCI.

“We really regret that this had to take place,” said
Susan Mancia, a UCI spokeswoman. “We are doing our best to
move forward.”

Irvine transplant coordinators have called all patients who were
on the waiting list and are starting to advise them on listing with
other medical centers, Marcia said.

Aside from UCLA, the medical centers that offer liver
transplants in the region are the USC University Hospital, Loma
Linda University Medical Center, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and
the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles.

With reports from Bruin wire services.