Auken demands Rigshospitalet accept organ offers around the clock

Danish Health Minister Ida Auken says she is “shocked” that Rigshospitalet has rejected organ offers because of staffing capacity, and expects the hospital to be able to receive and handle them around the clock, DR reports.

Rigshospitalet, Denmark’s only hospital department that performs liver transplants, rejected three offers of livers for children and seven for adults from the Scandiatransplant organ-sharing network over the past year, according to a report by Sundhedsmonitor on Thursday.

“It is deeply unsatisfactory that patients have been unable to receive a liver transplant because the hospital lacked the capacity to accept the organ offered to them,” Auken said in a written response to the news agency Ritzau. She said the consequences for the patients were not yet known and called for clear answers about what had happened to them.

Rigshospitalet has said it is “not unusual” to decline liver offers for children, adding that it has never been staffed to perform children’s liver transplants around the clock throughout the year.

Scandiatransplant coordinates organ distribution among Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden and Estonia. Rigshospitalet may receive an organ offered by another hospital when it is not needed there.

The Danish Health Authority said the current situation at Rigshospitalet is affecting three specialist services: liver transplants, surgery for pancreatic cancer and pancreas transplants. The situation follows the dismissal of three surgeons and the departure of two others, the authority said.

The authority has called an extraordinary meeting of its advisory committee on specialist planning and asked the Capital Region of Denmark for a more detailed account and a plan for the future provision of liver transplant and pancreatic cancer services.