ESD 11 Introduction to Technology and Policy


The Heart Transplant Case


Heart transplants are becoming an increasingly more common medical procedure. In some cases human hearts are used, in others those of pigs. There are arguments to support either variety that include issues of rejection and other medical problems, as well as ethical and economic considerations. In addition to the recipient patient?s medical history, a responsible physician must consider socio-economic, psychological, and an assortment of other non-medical parameters in deciding the appropriateness of this expensive and complex procedure.

You are charged by your hospital?s governing board to design a policy for the allocation of available organs to potential heart transplant recipients. You are to develop a set of implementable criteria for your hospital that can incorporate national criteria. As a demonstration of the manner in which the criteria will be applied, you will have a group of patients? case studies that you must arrange in order. You must justify to the governing board why your criteria and your ordering are reasonable. Consider the medical, social, economic, and ethical parameters of your policy and how you have applied it to this sample group of patients.


As a point of departure see:

www.this.org/transplant/heart_criteria.html

www.geocities.com/Heartland/Hills/2571/CHFtransplant.htm