Two patients aged 22 and 15 died after receiving kidneys from the same donor infected with the herpes virus.
A 22-year-old woman and a 15-year-old boy died after receiving kidneys from the same donor infected with the herpes simplex virus. This case, relayed in El País, led the National Transplant Organization (ONT) to question its protocols.
A third patient also died after receiving tissue from the donor, although in this case herpes was not the cause. “The pathology of the patient and the complexity of the intervention” got the better of him, specifies the Virgen del Rocío hospital (Seville).
Two poisonous kidneys
The transplant of the two toxic kidneys took place on June 30. Both patients initially responded well, but their recovery was interrupted by a fulminant infection caused by the herpes virus. The teenager died on July 10, the young woman the next day.
The hospital responsible for the transplants immediately opened an investigation, although Beatriz Domínguez, director of the ONT, describes these facts as “absolutely exceptional”. “Every year more than 130,000 transplants are performed worldwide and we have only found 10 such cases since the 1970s,” she says.
The herpes virus is very common. The World Health Organization estimates that 70% of the population is already infected and naturally immune to the virus, so specific tests are not included in transplant protocols.
Neither recipient was immune to herpes
Unfortunately, in our case, neither recipient was immune to herpes. In addition, the donor had an asymptomatic infection of the virus, therefore visually undetectable. However, the analyzes carried out after the operations revealed that the first samples taken from the donor were negative, while the last ones were already positive. The ONT is currently investigating whether this fact may be clinically relevant.
Ángeles López, the mother of the deceased patient, for her part, criticizes the fact that “adequate measures have not been taken to prevent the transmission of the virus”. “There were few previous cases, but there were. It should have been taken into account,” she criticizes. The association El Defensor del Paciente, which publicly denounced the case, asked the Andalusian Public Prosecutor’s Office to open proceedings to clarify what happened and, if necessary, “define responsibilities”.
Recently, two donors also caused the death of their recipients, this time due to the development of cancer.
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