News reports now claim that more than 25 lawsuits have been filed against UCI and its staff because patients there were forced to wait years for liver transplants but were never told that the hospital was turning away 90 % of the livers offered to it for transplant because it had no full-time liver-transplant surgeon on the staff. One early lawsuit was filed by the widow of a man who died waiting for a liver at UCI and a married couple who waited 6 years for a liver for the wife at UCI, before transferring to a program at a Chicago hospital where a successful transplant was performed. That suit alleged not only wrongful death but fraud and misrepresentation on the part of the hospital. Other news reports indicate that suits were filed on behalf of several other families whose relatives died waiting for a liver transplant.

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Concerns have been raised about the liver-transplant program at USC University Hospital because the death rate for patients receiving liver transplants is twice what it should be according to the statistics of the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients. The Registry reviews various factors, such as the health of the transplant recipients, and estimates how many patients should survive. In the last statistical period, 38 USC patients died within one year of their transplant operations, 19 more than what the Registry would otherwise have predicted.

Though Dr. Rick Selby, head of the USC transplant program, has attempted to defend his program, Dr. Goran Klintmalm, director of the Baylor Regional Transplant Institute, was quoted in a news report as saying, “When this happens, what comes to my mind is essentially a question of what the hell is going on?” The national average rate for surviving one year after a liver transplant is 86.6 %, while USC patients have had a survival rate of 75.8 %.

At least one widower of a USC patient has come forward to claim that her husband should not have died. Cheryl Rader’s husband John Rader, 64, died from a post-transplant infection 3 months after his transplant operation. Rader was one of the patients transferred to another program when the UCI liver transplant program was suspended. Steven Stone, 55, who suffers from hepatitis C, is transferring out of the USC program. He claims that the social worker who convinced him to go on the list at USC made the program “sound like it was one of the top.” In fact, the survival rate for USC patients has been steadily decreasing since at least 2002.

For more information about this and other liver transplant investigations in California, see USC’s Liver Transplant Patients Show Low Survival Rate and USC Liver Transplant Program under Investigation: Third California Hospital Faces Review. For a free evaluation of your personal injury, wrongful death, or medical malpractice case, you can fill out our case evaluation form. To find a personal injury attorney, wrongful death lawyer, or medical malpractice attorney, check out AttorneyPages.com.

Have you been harmed by USC's Liver Transplant Program ? You may have a lawsuit. Click here, for a top rated law firm to evaluate your legal rights. [Sponsored Link]