Some Transplants Cancelled After U.S. Air System Shuts Down

• A California girl in intensive care at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford had her liver transplant cancelled when a donor liver could not be flown from New Mexico.
• A 23-year-old Utah man on the heart waiting list for a year lost out on a new heart when the medical ambulance jet that was to bring it from Denver was grounded.
• A 49-year-old man who after three years of dialysis was about to receive a perfectly matched kidney at St. Anthony Hospital in Oklahoma City lost the chance when the plane carrying the organ was ordered to return to Portland, Oregon.

The United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), which operates the nation's transplant network, advised Organ Procurement Organizations (OPOs) to place organs "within their local or regional area" if the air traffic shutdown made giving priority to needier distant patients "unfeasible."

In the case of the kidney bound for Lee Hutson in Oklahoma City, coordinators said that after the plane returned to Oregon, the organ was transplanted into a patient in the Portland area.

"The chances for him (Hutson) getting a perfect match is unknown but it doesn't happen very often," said Samantha Mitchell, recovery coordinator for the Oklahoma Organ Sharing Network.

Hospital officials at Stanford said the liver that was being brought there from New Mexico was ultimately not able to be used for another patient because it had begun to deteriorate.

Doctors in New Mexico were able to transplant the donor's kidneys to two local patients, but because local physicians were not trained to work with a heart or liver, those organs had to be cremated with the donor.

"They sewed the body back up and took it to the morgue," said New Mexico nurse Charlotte Horton. "It was really frustrating. This was a really healthy donor."