Were empires preferred in donor organs?

Manipulation of organ transplants: sold a doctor donor organs at the University of Göttingen?

07/20/2012

According to media reports, a physician at the University Hospital Göttingen has falsified medical records to help rich patients get a donor liver more quickly. Twenty-five patients received a transplant based on the falsified information. The prosecution is now investigating possible corruption.

The organ donation scandal at the University Hospital Göttingen shakes the professional world. Should it be confirmed that patients were preferred to pay in cash for choosing a donor liver, this would have a fatal external effect. So far, it is clear that a physician of the University Hospital has falsified the medical records of patients on a large scale, to help them more quickly to a donor organ. Whether this money has flowed, must now clarify the prosecutor.

Counterfeit dialysis protocols and laboratory values
The machinations of the senior physician at the University Hospital Göttingen were investigated by investigations of the Standing Committee on Organ Transplantation. This found that not only dialysis protocols were forged to seal the patients kidney disease, which significantly increased the need for a timely liver transplant, but also some of the laboratory values ​​were manipulated. In at least two dozen cases, the physician had made patients on paper look sicker than they really were, she said „Southgerman newspaper“ about the extent of the scandal. In June, the first allegations were made against the doctor, who had come from Regensburg to the Göttingen University Hospital in 2008. A Russian patient had evidently received a liver transplant at Göttingen University Hospital on the basis of the fake medical record, even though he had no claim to a donor organ in Germany at all. In this case, the prosecutor currently investigates Braunschweig against the doctor and the patient.

Two dozen manipulated liver transplantsn
However, it became known that the manipulated liver transplantation at the University Hospital Göttingen was apparently not an isolated case. The accused physician is said to have also falsified the medical records of patients in 24 other cases, to give them faster access to a donor organ through the international exchange Eurotransplant, in which Germany and seven other European countries are joined together. The doctor certified that the patient had additional kidney disease and did not hesitate to submit dialysis protocols with fictitious values. Other laboratory findings were also invented freely. For example, many of the patients on paper had significantly elevated levels of creatinine or a tendency to coagulate too high, with no actual symptoms. The data should confirm that patients are not only suffering from liver disease, but also the kidneys are already affected, which makes the need for a liver transplantation much more urgent. Thus, patients slip clearly up the list of donor organs, to the detriment of those who are actually waiting for a donor liver for serious reasons.

Other people involved in the organ donation scandal in Göttingen?
The University Hospital Göttingen has responded to the allegations against the doctor immediately and this "released from its activities with immediate effect," the information of the hospital. However, experts doubt that the physician has made the sometimes extremely comprehensive manipulation of medical records without help and alone. Currently, two employees of a company for medical services from North Rhine-Westphalia are being investigated in this context. Presumably, however, more people are involved in the machinations of the doctor. In any case, the defendant faces significant penalties should the charge of corruption be confirmed. However, the penalty could increase if the ongoing investigation concludes that other patients who were waiting for a donor liver were injured by the manipulation or possibly even died. (Fp)

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Picture: Martin Büdenbender