Blood-type bungle at Queen Mary Hospital spurs overhaul of heart transplant system

An information system that automatically verifies blood group compatibility between donors and recipients in heart transplants will be set up in three to six months. This is after a woman patient was given a mismatched heart at Queen Mary Hospital in late May.

The interim system will be used while a sweeping reorganisation of the Hospital Authority's organ procurement and transplant protocols is planned and carried out. The move follows an investigation into the blunder by a team from the authority's Hong Kong West hospital cluster.

The interim system will be used only at Queen Mary, which does all heart transplants, but the authority said yesterday it would look at improvements to its information technology to cover other types of organs.

Meanwhile, despite doctors' fears that there was a 90 per cent chance the body of the 58-year-old heart receipient, whose blood is type A, would reject the type AB heart, it has not done so and a hospital spokesman said she should be home in under a month.

The investigation panel found multiple reasons for the error but held no one personally responsible. It cited a lack of information and communication in the heart transplant service and a lack of manpower, specialist training and proper role delineation.

The panel recommended developing an information system for organ procurement and transplant, and a new governance structure to steer the development of a fair organ procurement and transplant system.