"New Liver Transplant Rules Begin Amid Fight Over Fairness" - Lauren Neergaard
Wilnelia Cruz-Ulloa spent the last months of her life in a New York City hospital, waiting for a donated liver that never came. Where you live makes a difference in how sick you have to be to get a transplant, or if you'll die waiting. Now the nation's transplant system is aiming to make the wait for livers, and eventually all organs, less dependent on your ZIP code. New rules mandating wider sharing of donated livers went into effect Tuesday despite a fierce and ongoing hospital turf war in federal court. The new policy: patients near death within 575 miles from a donor hospital will be offered a liver first. “Whoever's sickest should have the greatest opportunity,” said Sander Florman, MD, professor of surgery at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and director of the Recanati/Miller Transplantation Institute at Mount Sinai. “This woman would be alive if the new rules were in place, or if she’d lived somewhere else.”
— Sander S. Florman, MD, Professor, Surgery, Director, Recanati/Miller Transplantation Institute, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
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