OPO, Tissue Bank Sued Over Donor With Hepatitis C

Two people who contracted hepatitis C after receiving tissue transplanted from an Oregon man with an undiagnosed case of viral hepatitis have filed lawsuits totaling $27.4 million against the tissue bank and organ procurement organization that processed the donor..

The lawsuits name Community Tissue Services, which supplied tissue from the donor to 34 recipients including the two plaintiffs, and Pacific Northwest Transplant Bank, which provided organs to six transplant recipients (see earlier Transplant Week story).

Medical experts said the case is unusual in that the donor was infected with hepatitis C, but did not test positive because the screening test used by the organ procurement organization searchs for antibodies not produced for six to eight weeks after infection.

The lawsuits charge that the OPO should have used a test adopted by blood banks in 1999, and should have warned potential recipients that hepatitis C was a transplant risk.

Mike Seely, executive director of the Pacific Northwest Transplant Bank, said the test called for in the lawsuit is unreliable and not approved by the federal government for cadavers, and that it can take a week to get back the results.

"It's regrettable, but there's nothing that can really be done in these cases until science catches up with a test that can eliminate the window," he said. "We don't take this lightly. We're as thorough as we can be and as thorough as current diagnostic testing can be."

Other sources: Oregonian