THE COMPANY which was co-ordinating attempts to find transport to take a 14-year-old girl to London for a liver transplant at the weekend has said it was never told she had to get there within a few hours.
EMSS (Emergency Medical Support Services) said the first it knew of this was when it read it on the front page of The Irish Timeson Monday.
The short time frame was because the donor organ she was due to receive was coming from a non-breathing donor.
Organs coming from non-heartbeating donors must be transplanted within about four to eight hours, whereas when organs are coming from a brain stem dead donor, there is no such rush.
Maedhbh McGivern’s family received a call from King’s College Hospital in London on Saturday at 7.20pm to say a matching liver had been found.
Various efforts were made to find air transport from Ballinamore, Co Leitrim, but none was successful in getting Ms McGivern there within the narrow window of time required.
A number of viable opportunities to get her there were stood down when the Irish Coast Guard helicopter in Sligo was offered at about 10pm.
However it later transpired it would take four hours for the helicopter to get to London, after stopping twice for refuelling on the way. This would have meant the family would not have got there by 2am on Sunday, the cut-off time.
EMSS claimed that at no point in all the phone calls back and forth did “the only two parties who knew that it was a non-living donor ever declare this”.
The McGivern family and King’s College Hospital knew the donated liver was coming from such a donor.
“Had this fact been disclosed sooner, then the Coast Guard helicopter would not have even been an option as Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital, Crumlin, had themselves sourced a private aircraft from the UK to come into Dublin airport to collect the family.
“This resource was stood down when the Coast Guard helicopter was made available,” it said.
It is understood this was the first time Crumlin hospital was sending a patient to London for an organ transplant coming from a non-living donor where the shelf life of the organ was so short.
EMSS’s statement indicates Crumlin was not aware of the short time available for transfer of the patient. Furthermore EMSS said when the Irish Coast Guard was initially contacted about transport at 8pm on Saturday, it said no helicopter was available.
EMSS said it was only when it suggested to the Health Service Executive ambulance service that a Coast Guard helicopter in Sligo might be available that this was checked and it had been available all evening.
However it said it took Coast Guard officials “nearly one hour” to sanction the use of the aircraft based in Sligo, and it said at no time was it (EMSS) told this aircraft would take four hours to get to London.
Had the Coast Guard offered one of its three helicopters potentially available at 8pm on Saturday, “then perhaps we may had a better outcome in this incident”, it said.
The Department of Transport, which handles queries on behalf of the Coast Guard, said it did not wish to comment on these claims pending the outcome of an inquiry into the reasons why Ms McGivern missed out on a transplant opportunity after waiting for a donor organ since last August.
EMSS said it has transported 45 transplant patients for Crumlin hospital since 1999 “without a single hitch”.
Crumlin’s contract with EMSS, which arranges transport for it in cases such as this, comes to an end this month and will not be renewed. This decision had been taken before the weekend incident after the hospital decided to co- ordinate air transport arrangements in future itself.
King’s College Hospital has confirmed the organ which was to be given to Ms McGivern went to another patient.
Meanwhile, an expert in the area of liver transplantation has said the quality of livers is not as good when coming from non-heartbeating donors and complication rates can be higher afterwards.
The expert was speaking to The Irish Timesbut did not wish to be named to avoid being drawn into the controversy.