Heart disease boy compared to organ dispute

Heart disease boy: parents and clinic agree

09/13/2014

In the dispute over the treatment of a heart-ill boy from Turkey, the parents and the university hospital in Giessen have agreed for the time being. The parents had complained because the doctors refused to put the terminally ill boy on the waiting list for a donor heart.

Heart disease boy should be examined by other doctors
According to a report by the dpa news agency, there is a settlement between the parents and the university hospital in Gießen in the dispute over the treatment of a heart-ill boy who urgently needs a donor organ. Before the district court, the parties therefore agreed that in the next four weeks, doctors from other clinics can examine the almost two-year-olds. If they see a possibility for a transplant, they should take over the child. The parents complained that their son was on the waiting list.

Doctors had refused because of a brain damage of the boy
The doctors had refused a listing for a new heart, after the boy had suffered a cardiac arrest and subsequently brain damage shortly before his transfer from an Istanbul hospital to Giessen - where the boy was to get a new heart. These and other risks are what make the giessen doctors a transplantation according to the laws impossible. Currently, the boy is treated in the university city, the technology keeps him alive. The legal dispute with the settlement is still not settled. If no other transplant center is found for the boy, the judges must decide again.

Heart transplants in Germany have been declining for years
Although cardiac surgery in Germany is at a high level, as reported at the beginning of the year, from the point of view of cardiac surgeons, the number of cardiac transplantations in Germany is continuing dramatically. Such interventions at the 22 transplant centers in Germany that transplant donor hearts have declined significantly since 1997. Professor Anno Diegeler, secretary of the German Society of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery (DGTHG) said in January: „We heart surgeons experience every day the suffering of our currently around 1,000 patients on the waiting lists. Due to their life-threatening disease state, many of these seriously ill people usually have to wait several months in an intensive care unit for the life-saving transplantation.“ (Ad)