tate
health officials are now responding to requests to investigate 41 liver
surgery cases at Mount Sinai Hospital, where a patient died in January
after donating part of his liver.
Robert Kenny, a spokesman for the State Department of Health, said 32
cases involved deaths. In the nine remaining cases, survivors requested
inquiries based on claims of inadequate care, and two of those cases
concerned liver donors.
The state began receiving calls for investigations after the death of
Michael Hurewitz, a healthy man who had donated part of his liver to his
brother in January. Although the operation was completed without
complications, Mr. Hurewitz died three days later, and a state
investigation held the hospital accountable and cited poor post-surgical
care.
Mount Sinai is considered a leader in the field of adult living-donor
transplants, and the January death was the first in the program. Mr.
Hurewitz was one of 34 patients in the transplant ward being cared for
by one first-year resident, the state inquiry found. The hospital was
fined $48,000 and banned from performing living-donor surgery for six
months.
The hospital submitted a report to the state last month saying it was
making changes to improve the care in the transplant ward. The changes
included increasing medical staff levels and barring first-year
residents from treating patients in the ward.
The hospital report, called a "plan of correction," will be made
public after the state completes its investigation, Mr. Kenny said.
Joan Lebow, a spokeswoman for Mount Sinai, said the hospital would
cooperate with the state but added that she could not discuss details of
any of the cases being investigated