Jesica Santillan's Malpractice

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17-Year-Old Girl Given Organs With Wrong Blood Type

Jesica's Story One mistake didn't kill her--the organ donor system was fatally flawed

Jesica Santillan's condition steadily deteriorated after the botched operation 7th Feb 2003.  Jesica, who is from a small town near Guadalajara, Mexico, needed the transplant because a heart deformity kept her lungs from getting oxygen into her blood. She suffered a heart attack (Feb. 10) and a seizure on Sunday, and was in critical condition with a machine keeping her heart and lungs going. Mahoney said she would have died within six months without a transplant. A family friend said the girl has only a few days left.

A 17-year-old girl, Jesica Santillan, lay near death Tuesday (Feb 12) after mistakenly receiving a heart and lung transplant from a donor with the wrong blood type. She died as the victim of an elementary and inexcusable medical mistake: her heart-lung transplant had gone wrong because her blood type and the donor's did not match. The girl has type O-positive blood but was given organs from a donor with type-A blood during the operation at Duke University Hospital. Hospital spokesman Richard Puff said he could not specify how the mistake was made. But he said that the hospital staff believed the organs were compatible and that compatibility had been confirmed. Jesica's body was rejecting the new organs because of the different blood types. Antibodies in her blood attacked the organs as foreign objects. Jesica Santillan's death, on February 22, was clearly due to surgeon and hospital error, but the entire national organ-transplant system also played a major role. The same process that found Jesica a heart and lungs and moved them to the operating room failed to protect her. Jesica's tragic death made headlines. But there have been other cases, many unreported, of accidentally mismatched organs.Given the basic flaws in the system exposed by Jesica's story, it's remarkable that there have not been more deaths.

Personal Reflection:
Jesica's case are likely to happen in my country because there are no strict regulation that organize the practice of a doctor. So anyone could be a doctor, without any title and open their own business illegally, I think because it is so hard for the cops or government to find out those malpractice doctors. But this case must be taken care as soon as possible, because the doctors deals with life and what are we without life right?