Organ Donation

Report tells of errors in organ case

U.S. regulators detail how a potential donor was given huge doses of sedatives and painkillers as six people watched.

Scary...

Police and the state medical board are now investigating whether the transplant surgeon brought in to retrieve Navarro's organs attempted to hasten the patient's death by ordering him pumped full of massive amounts of narcotic painkillers and sedatives. If true, the allegation would constitute a grave breach of the nation's transplant rules.

In a stark recounting, federal regulators detailed how at least six people in the room, including Navarro's treating doctor, stood by without intervening, even though some later said they were disturbed by the actions of the surgeon and a nurse administering the drugs. The regulators from the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services have been looking into the hospital's role in the case.

The amounts of the painkiller morphine and the sedative Ativan that the report says were given to Navarro were "between 10 and 20 times a usual dose of these drugs," said Dr. Philip S. Barie, president-elect of the Society of Critical Care Medicine, who was not involved in the preparation of the document."I don't think I've ever given doses of either drug in that amount," said Barie, professor of surgery and public health at Weill Medical College of Cornell University in New York.