Sebelius: I Can’t Step Into Girl’s Transplant Case (When Other Children Are Just As Sick.)

[Yo_Mama]

7. I think the issue probably is chest capacity

How many 10 year olds - especially with a life-threatening condition, which tends to affect growth - have a chest that could accommodate an adult pair of lungs?

I suppose they could try to trim them up, but obviously that's going to make the process more risky. It's awful, but suppose one out of two kids would survive such an attempt, but two out three older persons will?

This is harrowing stuff at best, and this certainly isn't the best. Maybe policies aren't the same everywhere.

I found these statistics which looked like the wait for pediatric lung transplants isn't that bad:
http://www.stlouischildrens.org/our-services/lung-transplant-program/statistics

But that's St. Louis. CHOP seems to do less of them and not have as good outcomes:
http://www.chop.edu/service/lung-transplant-program/volumes-and-outcomes.html

Size does seem to be the issue with kids:
http://www.chop.edu/service/lung-transplant-program/lung-transplant-waiting-list.html

Lungs are allocated to patients based on the age, height, and blood type of the patient. Patients that are <12 years old, lungs are allocated as per body size (height), blood type, and amount of time on the waiting list. Patients that are 12 years and >, lungs are allocated based on a scoring system that determines who on the waitlist is the most sick versus who has been on the list the longest.

Stanford's page also refers to size matching:
http://www.lpch.org/DiseaseHealthInfo/HealthLibrary/transplant/lungstran.html

When a donor lung becomes available, a computer searches all the people on the waiting list for a lung and sets aside those who are not good matches for the available lung. A new list is made from the remaining candidates. The person at the top of the specialized list is considered for the transplant. If he/she is not a good candidate, for whatever reason, the next person is considered, and so forth. Some reasons that people lower on the list might be considered before a person at the top include the size of the donor organ and the geographic distance between the donor and the recipient.