Organ transplant solution was tainted

The head of organ transplantation at Beaumont Hospital has criticised the Irish Medicines Board for failing to tell the hospital that a solution for transplanting organs had been quarantined because it was contaminated.

According to David Hickey, director of transplantation at Beaumont Hospital, three patients had organs implanted which had been stored in a batch of viaspan that has been quarantined by IMB.

While he said those three patients had not suffered any problems, he said it was an “extraordinary oversight” by IMB and the manufacturers, Bristol-Myers Squibb, not to tell Beaumont about the contamination.