4 die because of liver transplant
Four of seven patients who had liver transplants from living donors by the end of March were dead within one month after the surgery at the Kobe International Frontier Medical Center (KIFMEC), The Yomiuri Shimbun has learned.
The hospital was built in a part of the medical industrial city project promoted by the Kobe municipal government.
The Japanese Liver Transplantation Society, an association of doctors who conduct liver transplants, has already begun an investigation to see whether there were any problems with the hospital’s treatment, according to sources.
“The mortality rate is very high,” said a liver transplant expert. “They should stop doing surgeries and inspect the situation.”
KIFMEC was established last November, with Kyoto University Prof. Emeritus Koichi Tanaka, who has experience performing over 2,000 living donor liver transplants, appointed as a director of the hospital. One of its goals is offering living donor liver transplant surgeries to foreign patients visiting Japan. – Asia One
Category: Features, Health alert
