Organ Transplants

Dr. Maria Siemionow had been preparing for 20 years to make the phone call. "We have a donor," she told Dr. Frank Papay, the chief of dermatology and plastic surgery at the Cleveland Clinic, late one night. Then she headed to the hospital to give a woman who had no upper jaw, nose, cheeks or lower eyelids -- who was unable to eat, talk, smile, smell or breathe on her own -- a new face.

A New York hospital is seeking to conduct the nation's first uterus transplant, a procedure intended to allow women without a womb or with an impaired womb to bear children. The wombs would come from dead donors, as most organs do, and would be removed after recipients gave birth so they would not need lifetime anti-rejection drugs. The hospital's ethics board has conditionally approved the plans. However, the hospital's president said a transplant was not expected "anytime in the near future."

Police are investigating whether a Kaiser Permanente transplant surgeon attempted to hasten the death last February of a 26-year-old San Luis Obispo man on life support in order to harvest his organs more quickly. The allegations, if true, would constitute a grave breach of the nation's organ transplant rules, as well as a public relations setback for those promoting organ donation, experts in transplantation said.

It was to be the final medical procedure for Ruben Navarro, an altruistic end to the life of a critically ill 26-year-old who doctors said had no chance to recover. Staffers at Sierra Vista Regional Medical Center in San Luis Obispo were to disconnect him from the machine pumping oxygen into his lungs. After his heart stopped, transplant surgeons were to remove his organs so they could be used to save the lives of others. But in the late night quiet of an operating room Feb.

The San Luis Obispo County sheriff-coroner has concluded that a 26-year-old potential organ donor died of natural causes, complicating a criminal inquiry into whether a transplant surgeon attempted to hasten the man's death. Police have been looking into whether the surgeon, Dr. Hootan Roozrokh, ordered excessive doses of pain medication and sedatives for Ruben Navarro in February 2006 in order to harvest his organs more quickly.

Under pressure to tighten oversight of the nation's transplant centers, federal health officials unveiled strict new standards Thursday that could force dozens of organ programs to give up precious federal funding or have it pulled from them. The rules come after a series of scandals in California in the last 18 months have embarrassed regulators and exposed serious gaps in the monitoring of the nation's transplant system. The U.S.

To allay fears that surgeons might try to retrieve the organs of dying patients prematurely, the federal contractor that oversees organ transplantation approved standards Friday to protect the growing number of donors who have no hope of recovery but who are not officially brain-dead.

Monique Mendoza's cystic fibrosis was so debilitating three years ago that taking a shower left her exhausted and nearly breathless. The disease had not only clogged her lungs, but also sapped her strength and spirit. "I had my funeral planned. I was OK with ... dying," said Mendoza, a 30-year-old resident of Rancho Santa Margarita. "I had already been to a lot of my friends' funerals with CF, so I knew what they were like."

She saw whales while jogging on the beach. She swam with sea turtles in the Pacific. She snapped a couple of pictures of her friend while biking through the Hawaiian countryside. Monique Mendoza finished a triathlon Sunday, two years after having a double lung transplant. But that's not what she wanted to talk about. Mendoza wanted to talk about how the sun felt on her skin, what it was like to walk on lava rock, the way the doves cooed as she ran past. "Have you ever seen a dove up close?

A state appeals court has resurrected the malpractice lawsuit that helped shut down UCI Medical Center's troubled liver transplant program. A lower-court judge threw out the case two years ago on grounds that plaintiff Elodie Irvine had agreed to a $50,000 settlement from the hospital. Irvine, who had deadly kidney and liver disorders, spent four years on UCI's organ transplant waiting list before transferring to another hospital and getting the procedures done within two months.