Need a liver transplant? You may have to move to Georgia
Transplant surgeon Dr. Adel Bozorgzadeh wants to heal patients, not watch them die. He had already lost four patients since summer — all on the wait list for a liver. Another one, 42-year-old Michael Champigny, had survived a life-threatening infection before Thanksgiving and urgently needed a new liver too. But Bozorgzadeh can never predict when — or even if — that will happen.
What he does know is that his patients at UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester could get transplants faster if they were allowed to use donor livers from Georgia and South Carolina, where the supply is greater.
Bozorgzadeh passionately supports a proposal by the organization that oversees US transplant policy to dramatically alter how donor livers are distributed.
The idea is to fly livers from states in the South, Midwest, and Northwest that have more donors to places like Massachusetts, New York, Minnesota, and parts of California, which have higher demand. But since it was released for public comment in August, the plan has quickly become one of the most divisive in transplant history.
Read the complete story at BostonGlobe.com.
Don’t have a Globe subscription? Boston.com readers get a 2-week free trial.
To comment, please create a screen name in your profile
To comment, please verify your email address
Conversation
This discussion has ended. Please join elsewhere on Boston.com