A UK-based hospital has recently released statements concerning malpractice concerns stemming from the death of a soldier who apparently received the lungs of a smoker from a transplant operation.

Papworth Hospital, located in Cambridgeshire in east England, has defended its decision to transplant smoker’s lungs to Corporal Matthew Millington last 2007 as being necessary, and that the hospital “had no choice”. Papworth Hospital is considered to be the largest specialist cardionthoracic hospital in the UK.

Millington was diagnosed with an incurable lung illness that would eventually render him unable to breathe during his rounds in Iraq in 2005. Millington was admitted into Papworth Hospital thereafter, where he received a double lung transplant in April of 2007. He died of a cancerous tumor growth in his transplanted lungs in February 8, 2008, less than a year after he was given his new lungs.

Investigation into the case revealed that hospital radiologists managed to miss the detection of the cancerous tumor prior to Millington’s operation. Further analysis revealed that the lungs were previously owned by an individual who smoked an equivalent of 50 cigarettes a day.

Papworth Hospital, however, reiterates that the practice of using smoker’s lungs in similar transplant operations is “not uncommon”, and that the hospital had a really good reputation when it comes to these operations.

“This is an extremely rare case,” according to the hospital’s statement. “Papworth Hospital has a very strong track record of high quality outcomes and this is an extremely rare case. Patients who are accepted on to the transplant waiting list have no other option open to them, however, we must stress that all donor organs are screened rigorously prior to transplantation.”

Papworth went on in detailing that in September of 2008, the hospital managed to carry out 146 lung transplant operations in the UK, while 84 people on the hospital’s waiting list died.

“If we had a policy that said we did not use the lungs of those who had smoked, then the number of lung transplants carried out would have been significantly lower,” asserts the Papworth statement.

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