My brother was left brain dead after doctors botched his heart transplant – they kept him in a vegetative state for years to boost performance stats
A grieving sister has launched a legal battle against a hospital accused of keeping her brain-dead brother alive for years to improve performance.
Darryl Young, 61, suffered irreversible brain damage and was left in a vegetative state after a botched heart transplant procedure at Newark Beth Israel Hospital in New Jersey in 2018, according to a new lawsuit.
The lawsuit alleges that the center kept Young alive only to improve transplant survival records, which had fallen below the national average after a pattern of failed operations.
Audio recordings obtained by ProPublica showed hospital staff saying they would do whatever they could to keep their patient alive to maintain their chances of survival, despite there being no chance of recovery.
The hospital staff’s alleged cover-up, which one doctor privately called “highly unethical,” came after damning government inspection reports found the facility was putting patients in “imminent danger.”
Darryl Young was reportedly kept alive for four years despite extensive brain damage and no chance of recovery. According to the lawsuit, the hospital hid the truth about his condition and poor prognosis from his family (Photo courtesy of Mr. Young’s obituary)
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which regulates hospitals that receive federal funding such as Newark Beth Israel, found in 2019 that the hospital failed to take the actions it deemed necessary to save patients.
The court case against both individual doctors and the health center alleges that staff were ‘negligent and deviated from accepted standards of practice’, leading to Mr Young’s tragic outcome following a failed heart transplant.
Mr Young, who required a heart transplant due to his congestive heart failure, suffered brain damage during his operation, believed to be caused by a dangerous drop in blood pressure, and showed no signs of regaining consciousness.
Initially, Andrea Young’s family was told that the operation went well and that there was nothing to worry about. But as the days passed without her brother waking, Mrs. Young became uneasy.
Dr. Margarita Camacho, the surgeon who performs the vast majority of heart transplants, including Mr. Young’s, assured her that she had seen patients recover from similar situations, the lawsuit said.
Mrs Young was later told her brother had brain damage, but in only small concentrations, which initially gave his sister hope.
She said: ‘Now I know it was false hope.’
Despite showing no brain activity, the lawsuit alleges, doctors and nurses kept Mr. Young hooked up to a feeding tube for nutrients, suctioned mucus from his lungs and hooked him up to a breathing machine.
He was kept alive until September 2022.
Mrs. Young told me ProPublica that while she understands that medical errors can happen, “it is their duty and their responsibility to be honest and let the family know exactly what went wrong.”
The struggle to find out more about her brother’s condition and the deception of hospital staff was so frustrating that she even read medical papers and textbooks in the library so she knew what questions to ask.
She added: ‘I remember it as clearly as if it was yesterday, so desperate for answers.’
Ms Young hopes the lawsuit will hold the hospital to account: “Particularly because the doctors were never frank and honest about the circumstances of my brother’s condition from the start, it is not only wrong and unethical, but it has taken from our entire family.
‘I think the most important thing is that those responsible are held accountable.’
Although the hospital has not filed a response to Ms. Young’s legal complaint, spokesperson Linda Kamateh said, “Newark Beth Israel Medical Center is one of the top heart transplant programs in the country and we are committed to providing our patients with the highest quality of care . . Because litigation is still ongoing in this case, we cannot provide any further details.’
The numerous post-transplant deaths (at least six) could partly explain why the heart transplant program’s one-year survival rate fell below 85 percent in 2018, according to ProPublica, well below the national average of about 89 percent.
The hospital performs approximately 29 heart transplants annually.
According to ProPublica reports, the doctors who treated Mr. Young met in secret after the botched surgery on September 21, 2018, which left the patient suffering from pneumonia, strokes, seizures and a fungal infection. of these effects.
They agreed that they had to do everything they could to keep him alive, according to the investigation ProPublicato maintain their chances of survival.
In recordings of the meeting obtained by the news site, Dr. Mark Zucker, director of the hospital’s heart and lung transplant programs, said, “We need to keep him alive until at least June 30.”
The program’s survival rate had been declining for years. If it fell below a certain level designated by CMS — 73 percent of patients survive after one year — it could trigger a federal audit.
If that audit revealed serious problems, such abnormally low survival rates, the hospital would no longer receive reimbursement from Medicare for transplants.
The hospital’s heart transplant survival rate would drop from 84.2 percent to 81.6 percent if Mr Young were the seventh patient to die.
While this would not warrant a formal audit, ProPublican reported that the transplant team was concerned that this drop would draw unwanted attention from the federal government.
According to reports, Dr. Zucker said, “If he’s not dead in this [yearly survival rate] Even if he is dead in the next report, it will be a topic that will wait another six months.”
Newark Beth Israel Hospital has not formally responded to the legal complaint, although a spokesperson insisted that “we are committed to providing the highest quality of care to our patients.”
Mr Young suffered brain damage during his heart transplant and never woke up. A medical report on his condition after the operation stated: ‘He is not following orders. He looks very encephalopathic, which means the brain is damaged.
Doctors should tell the patient’s family when an operation does not go as planned, resulting in the patient not waking up. But Ms Young claimed they had never had such a conversation with her.
The hospital insisted it would hold a family meeting with Mrs Young to discuss her brother’s condition. But according to the legal complaint, the medical team failed to communicate the patient’s poor prognosis.
A follow-up investigation on May 23, 2019 found that Ms. Young had still not received any updates after a procedure was canceled due to her brother’s worsening condition. The medical records indicated a poor prognosis, but… she was not informed.
They also failed to inform her that he had contracted a fatal fungal infection in the hospital called C. auris, which is resistant to many drugs and can cause skin and bloodstream infections.
The lawsuit also claimed the hospital recovery measures ignored in several other cases.
ProPublican found that in 2018, two patients, one who received a heart transplant and one who received a lung transplant, both developed kidney failure. The complication was related to severe drops in blood pressure, which also led to Mr Young’s brain damage.
After the first incident, internal hospital policy recommended increasing the frequency of blood pressure measurements.
The hospital then recommended better monitoring again after the second incident. CMS found no evidence that staff implemented the new policy at the time.