Wrong diagnosis

The Jan. 16 story Woman needing transplant dies after Jackson declines transfer, on the unfortunate woman who died at West Kendall Baptist, suggests that her death was because she was not transferred to Jackson Memorial Hospital for a lung transplant. This is utterly misleading.

Transplantation isn’t a treatment for patients who suddenly develop lung failure. It can be life saving for patients who have progressive lung diseases such as cystic fibrosis and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis.

Patients need to be stable enough to wait for an appropriate donor and be in good enough health to survive the surgery and the many potential complications after surgery, including infection, organ rejection and death. Even in those most optimal cases, almost one third die within the first year.

To suggest that this woman died because she didn’t get a lung transplant is irresponsible and only makes the loss more difficult for her family to bear.

This story was originally published January 18, 2016 at 9:16 PM with the headline "Wrong diagnosis."