Hospital Ethics Committee and Heart Transplantation The hospital ethics committe
ID: 203752 • Letter: H
Question
Hospital Ethics Committee and Heart Transplantation The hospital ethics committee was discussing an important and urgeht case. A donor heart had become available, but an extremely rare thing had happened. Two heart- transplant candidates in the hospital were both matches for the donor heart. One patient was known to the committee as Mr. X, the other as Ms. Y For someone with heart failure, Mr. X had been on the transplant waiting list a long time. He had been waiting one year and was near death. Ms. Y had just been placed on the list and could be sustained with medication for quite some time, possibly until another heart became available. The answer seemed obvious-give the heart to Mr. X. Anumber.of the members of the committee did not agree with this answer. They argued that time on the transplant list should be only one factor considered. They saw a problerm in Mr. X's medical record. Mr. X was 64 years old and had suffered from a heart condition for years. He had had two angioplasties and two bypass operations to correct a blockage of the heart's blood vessels. The problem seen by some committee members was that Mr. X still smoked ate fatty foods, and was very overweight After each procedure, doctors had warned Mr X that he must change his life-style, and that if he didn't, his condition would worsen He never stopped smoking, however, and never changed his diet. He said it was too hard Research has proven that smoking and high cholesterol are risk factors for heart problems. Blockage of the coronary arteries is directly attributed to these two factors Treatments such as angioplasty (opening the blood vessels by passing a tube into the 5 67 89 0Explanation / Answer
1)The ethical guidelines that should be followed by the ethical committee based on the code of conduct of the transplantation of the heart in a patient with two donors X and Y should be based on altruism and utilitarianism. There are various factors which should be followed by the human ethical committee like the condition of the donor and the patient, mutual agreement, preservation of the name and the integrity of the patient, mutual consent and volunteering by the patient, condition of the heart, blood group matching, and the histocompatibility analysis of the heart organ. These factors should be reviewed thoroughly by the ethical committee. There is ban on the illegal transplantation of the organs without the consent of the patient. There is an inherent feeling of satisfaction, happiness and mutual consent with volunteering of the organs among the same family members and relatives. In this case, the condition of patient X has worsened due to the persistent habit of smoking and eating fatty acids which leads to the deposition of cholesterol in the blood vessels of the heart. The principles that should be followed while organ transplantation :
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