A boost in organ transplants at Allegheny General Hospital may be slowing after a rival program at UPMC in Oakland reopened earlier this week, numbers released Friday suggest.
The North Side hospital said it had roughly tripled typical volumes of kidney transplants since Sept. 21, when UPMC Montefiore and Presbyterian voluntarily suspended their transplant operations over mold concerns. But at least seven of those 11 surgeries at AGH happened last week, before the UPMC program resumed Sunday.
Patient referrals for kidney transplants at AGH appeared to slip from last week, too, although spokesman Dan Laurent said the hospital continues to see “a pretty significant increase in the activity of our transplant programs overall.” He said referrals to the AGH heart transplant program grew this week and reached 20 since Sept. 21, about double the average.
“We’re also experiencing an expanded network of physicians and hospitals who are referring patients to us” for transplant work, said Mr. Laurent, who represents AGH parent Allegheny Health Network.
He declined to speculate on the reasons for the extra activity.
Downtown-based UPMC did not say Friday whether any transplant candidates at Montefiore and Presby switched to AGH over mold worries, but a spokeswoman earlier in the week had said the Oakland hospitals had seen no decreases in their transplant waiting lists.
Transplant volumes at UPMC “have been stronger than expected year-to-date and since the program reopened,” spokeswoman Wendy Zellner said in a statement on Friday. UPMC hospitals — excluding Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC — completed 370 transplants last year, more than triple the figure at AGH.
“We are also deeply appreciative of the support shown by our patients, many of whom have thanked us for putting their safety above anything else,” Ms. Zellner said. “As a transplant program that takes care of the sickest of the sick and offers treatments that few others can provide, we look forward to maintaining the trust and confidence of our patients and our referring physicians.”
UPMC has said state, federal and in-house investigators have been unable to find the source of the mold that infected four patients treated in Montefiore and Presby.
A spokesman for the federal Centers of Disease Control and Prevention said that the investigation is ongoing. He said CDC epidemiologists and lab specialists are still in Pittsburgh investigating in the hospitals, and may be here through early next week before their work on the ground is done.
A final report could be completed within a few weeks after they leave.
Adam Smeltz: asmeltz@post-gazette.com, 412-263-2625 or on Twitter @asmeltz. Sean D. Hamill contributed.
First Published: October 3, 2015, 4:00 a.m.
