HOUSTON – Many transplant patients at Memorial Hermann Hospital are looking into different options at local hospitals after its transplant program was abruptly shut down.
Officials are investigating allegations that Dr. J. Steve Bynon Jr. was “secretly” altering transplant databases, intending to make some of his patients ineligible for liver transplants. On Thursday, Memorial Hermann said in a statement that it had found evidence implicating Bynon.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services confirmed they’re investigating accusations that the surgeon overseeing the liver and kidney transplant program at Memorial Hermann was manipulating donor databases and possibly preventing some of his patients from receiving livers. Those allegations were revealed in a report by the New York Times.
Mike Dimas, of Dallas, has been waiting on the kidney transplant list for over seven years and shared his thoughts after transplant patients were left in limbo on when the program will be open again.
“Memorial Hermann serves such a large area,” Dimas said. “I mean, it serves a tremendous number of people. So it is a huge hit to the community that is waiting for and looking for a transplant. I hope it’s resolved quickly so that they can resume their normal way of life and hopefully get the organs they need.”
He was diagnosed with chronic kidney disease in the summer of 2015. Two years later, around Thanksgiving, Dimas said his kidney function had decreased to the point where he was then qualified for a transplant.
“I mean, it was it was really a kind of a surprise to me. It wasn’t something that I had anticipated or even thought about,” Dimas said.
In 2017, he was placed on the transplant list and in June of 2018, his kidney function had fallen where he now needs dialysis and has been a dialysis patient as he waits for a viable kidney.
“After a series of health issues that I had, I was no longer a candidate for peritoneal dialysis and I went to the more traditional form of dialysis that most people, I think are familiar with the hemodialysis, where I actually go into the clinic,” Dimas said.
He goes to dialysis three days out of the week for five hours.
Even with a universal blood type -- Dimas said he’s still been waiting and the requirements to donate a kidney is not as easy as one would think.
“A kidney that can come to me could go to anybody else on the list,” he said. “So, it’s not like if I had a rare blood type and that kidney came up, but that kidney couldn’t go to anybody else except for somebody with that exact blood type. So I don’t necessarily get to jump (up on the list) because somebody else was not necessarily a blood type match or something along those lines.”
Dimas explains that when a kidney becomes available, the hospital does not call the first person on the list but instead calls the first three people on the list. He said once you get into the hospital, they do a lot more intense testing. It is possible that someone may not be viable for the organ or have health issues and would not get cleared to have the surgery to have the transplant.
“They have the other people waiting in the wings so that there’s not the wait because a kidney, or any organ, only has a certain shelf life once it’s harvested from a body to be viable for donation,” Dimas said. “So they have the other people waiting so they’ll just be able to get them in rapidly.”
Once there is a match, that patient is rushed into surgery as the other waiting patients are sent home.
“If that first person ends up not being a viable candidate, then they go to the next person and then maybe the next person. To make sure that, that organ is not lost,” he said.
Although Dimas is not directly impacted by the Memorial Hermann decision to shut down its program, he says the thought that can happen because of the process patients have to go through to even get a kidney transplant.
“I have had, a couple of instances where I’ve had people who are living donors come in and say, I would like to donate,” he said. “There’s a whole process that you go through with that. Unfortunately, the people who have tried to donate were not approved to donate for various reasons for, I mean, it could be a health issue, it could be an age issue, it could be, you know, historical health, their health history.”
Dimas said there are a million reasons why people are denied the ability to donate. He said even when his sibling tried to donate her kidney because she was a medical match, other circumstances prevented her from donating.
With a definite sense of anonymity and security, he questioned how Dr. J. Steve Bynon Jr. was able to alter the transplant database.
“Because everything is so meticulous in the way that they go through the process, how was how was he able to do that? Dimas asked. “I’d be interested to see exactly what comes of it. And then my second question is to what end, what was his motivation for doing this? I mean, how did that help him? I mean, I could see if it was he had somebody like a loved one on the list and he was like, ‘Oh, well, if I get rid of these people, then my loved one is the next one up,’ that might I could kind of see that, but you know that those details haven’t necessarily been disclosed. So, I’m just kind of curious as to what, you know, what his motivation was, you know, in, in the whole process.”
In the meantime, Dimas asked how many patients would be impacted in that amount of time and how many people might have not been able to be served.
On Friday, transplant specialists at Houston Methodist Hospital said they are reviewing close to 75 Memorial Hermann patients left looking for answers and options.
KPRC 2 reporter Rilwan Balogun confirmed that some of Memorial Hermann’s patients may be moving to Houston Methodist for care.
“We are currently evaluating 5 liver transplant patients and 69 kidney transplant patients,” a spokeswoman for Houston Methodist said.
Dimas gave words of advice to those in waiting, “I just kind of sat back and said, you know, when it is meant to happen, it will happen. And that’s the only way that I learned that I was able to come to terms with it. And if this had happened at the transplant center where I’m listed, I would hope that I might look at it the same way as, like, OK, this is going to happen when it’s meant to happen. And you know that plan is set and you just have to wait and let it and it’s a tremendous lesson in patience and acceptance.”