4mo ago

Organ transplant patient in Michigan dies from rabies

The patient had the organ transplanted at a hospital in Ohio in December and died in January, Michigan Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson Lynn Sutfin said.

A subsequent investigation that also involved the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Ohio Department of Health determined the patient got rabies from the donated organ. Sutfin did not specify which organ was transplanted.

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Does this mean that whoever dontated the organ also died from rabies without having been accurately diagnosed, or does it mean that someone was carrying rabies?
- If someone died of rabies, it would certainly be known that it was rabies. The symptoms are pretty obvious and it's not likely it would be mistaken for anything else.
  More likely, they were infected and died of some other cause before symptoms started showing, which can take as little as two weeks or potentially over a year.
  
  There's even some evidence that it can be longer. I found one that was a 6 year incubation.
  
  For what it’s worth, I saw a comment on Reddit that pretty much said this. They heard it from a nurse who works in Ohio talking about the case.
- They were more than likely infected but not yet showing symptoms. Carrying rabies but not a carrier of rabies. If you get bit in the foot, it takes awhile to reach your brain.
  
  Especially if they’re tall.
What a terrible way to die
- It would’ve been far preferable to simply not wake up from that surgery.
According to the CDC, fewer than 10 people die annually from rabies in the U.S. And it happening due to organ transplants is very rare, but not unheard of; in 2013, a patient who received a kidney transplant died from rabies.
So it's happened before...cool cool, cool...
- And if it’s only 10 deaths per year, and there was a previous death like roughly 10 years ago, that’s at about 2%, which I assume is reasonably high enough to test for.
  
  Your math is off by a bit there. In 2024 alone there were ~48,000 organ transplants performed in the US. Now, that was a record high. So if all ~10 people who died of rabies in 2024 had been organ donors and somehow it wasn't caught that they died from rabies that's still only a 0.02% chance of getting an infected organ. That number is still wrong because all of those cases were caught and their organs would not have been donated, plus only about 58% of the adult US population are listed as organ donors. Also, it's fewer than 10 people, not ~10 people. The actual average number of people who have died from diagnosed rabies in the US since 2000 is ~2.5 per year.
  So, overall, the chance of a registered organ donor dying from rabies and their organs still being donated is remarkably low.
  
  Where are you getting that 2%?
  I assume that 2 rabies deaths in 10 years for however many organ transplants in that same period is much less than a 2% incidence. A quick google tells me that there were over 48k organ transplants in the US in 2024 alone.
Scrubs episode come to life.
- That episode was actually based on a real event from 2004
- The moment you start blaming yourself..
This was not the kind of nightmare fuel I expected when I logged on to Lemmy today.
- It’s all anxiety fuel. Gulp gulp.
I'm not sure rabies is screened in donors. Thats brutal.
- For good reason, it's extremely rare.
  Edit: The statistic i looked up, is less than 10 cases a year. It would be a waste of resources to test for rabies on every organ donor. But I wouldn't be surprised if they start testing now.
  
  A quick search shows rabies testing is $80 to ~$200. Given the cost and time a transplant takes I would say testing for rabies would be insignificant. But health insurance companies are assholes so they probably would not cover the cost due to the rarity of the disease. Cheaper for them to let people die and families sue.
  
  Ya I get it, that would be expensive and impractical.
- I’m pretty sure it isn’t part of any normal testing. Maybe if there were symptoms in the donor that indicated rabies or their family noted they had interactions with wild animals, but typically I think it’s mostly hepatitis, HIV, syphilis, toxoplasmosis, cytomegalovirus, chagas, and west Nile that are always checked for.
  
  you got it! I'm just wrapping up schooling for med lab so thanks for the refresher!
- Plus the test for rabies needs brain tissue, cant just test blood or the organ to be transplanted
"How did the organ donor die?!?!"
"Oh, rabies."
Michiganders: “And that’s why you can’t trust Ohio”
- I didn't need another reason.
Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuck that. You better drop my ass into a coma or straight up kill me before I have to go through a rabies death.
I'm sure RFK's CDC will get right to the bottom of what happened here and prevent it from happening again /s
- More vitamin A would have saved them. /s
  
  And methylene blue! Sure it gives you diarrhea, but its blue!
- If everyone has rabies, then, no one has rabies!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VbEkKa-W55s&pp=0gcJCdgAo7VqN5tD
Episode in Scrubs...
I know someone that's involved in the organ transplant industry. What I was told is that when someone is on life support, the hospital and agency involved in the transplantation process aggressively try to get the family to sign off on the organ harvest, without full confirmation that the person is actually brain dead. It happened in KY in 2021
- Not nearly well publicized enough.
  While I believe organ donation should be opt out rather than opt in, I also think that it should be a strictly non-profit with severe criminal penalties for putting any dollar value on the organs.
  Doctors, labs, nurses, etc all get what they normally get, but fuck the organ harvesting industry in general.
- I donated my mother’s organs back in 2014. While my mother was on life support the doctors didn’t mention it once. Once they confirmed she was brain dead and were able to show it my brothers and I we immediately told them they could take their organs. The biggest problem we had is they wanted to keep her alive longer than we wanted. It was getting close to her bday and we didn’t want her to die on her birthday so we told them the day before is the latest they can do it or we weren’t donating. They found recipients that day and we removed her from life support the next day. She died a day before her birthday.
  There wasn’t any pressure nor did they have to try and convince us. Though my whole family has the mindset that we don’t need them after we are dead so just take what you need.
- Just because there was an incident I would not call that a structural problem. We NEED organs to help other people survive, please don't scare people off from donating them.
  Yeah, of course we need to have strict rules and guidelines on how all this has to happen, but please don't make it sound like if you're badly injured that a doctor will simply write you off for money, that doesn't happen.
I am so glad I got transplanted last may because I think dialysis for 4 years might be preferable to receiving any kind of really serious medical procedures while this clown show is in charge.
- They got the organ in December. While this administration is a clown show, I don't see how that's relevant.
- Hey, congrats!
  That had to have been a huge relief, finally getting the transplant you needed.
  
  true.
  dealing with insurance and prescriptions though...
- This clown might stay for a good while if decent Americans won't take action.
What a horrific story
Well now I have another question to add to my list of things to discuss with the surgeon before I accept any organ transplants.
I just read more than I thought was enough. https://www.news-medical.net/health/Why-is-the-Rabies-CFR-So-High.aspx
Someone needs to put together a memorial celebrity rabies awareness pro-am fun run race for the cure, i guess
That image looks so bad! Is that really what rabies virus looks like?
- Most things look pretty bad and gross when you zoom in on them close enough.

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