Medical Blunder: Hospital Mistakenly Transplants Kidney To Wrong Patient With Same Name

If you have seen the trailer of the upcoming Akshay-Kareena movie, Good Newwz, you would know that owing to the similarity in the last names of the couples, the doctors mistakenly inseminate one woman with the sperm of the other guy. Well something similar happened in the real life, just not with eggs and sperms.

A medical mix-up at Virtua Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Camden, New Jersey led to wrong kidney transplant.

_{Image credit: AFP}

According to PEOPLE, the day after the organ was successfully transplanted, an employee on the clinical team discovered the 51-year-old patient received the kidney ¡°out of priority order.¡±

Both the patients looking for a transplant apparently had the same name and were of similar age, which led to the administrative error in identifying the correct patient next in order on the transplant list.

Fortunately, the person higher up the priority list received a kidney transplant soon. Both the patients are now in recovery.

¡°While the unusualness of having two patients with the identical name so close together on the transplant list contributed to the error, it is our responsibility to make sure we contact and move forward with the right patient,¡± hospital said in a statement, which also mentioned that steps will be taken to avoid such a happening in the future.

¡°We have a profound responsibility to people who literally place their lives in our hands,¡± PEOPLE quoted the Reginald Blaber, Executive Vice President and Chief Clinical officer of Virtua Health as sating. He further said, ¡°Mistakes of this magnitude are rare, and despite the unusual circumstances of similar patient identities, additional verification would have prevented this error.¡±

Thankfully both the patients are safe, so the error can probably be overlooked.