For the first time in the U.S. since AIDS screening began 25 years ago, an organ recipient at a city hospital has contracted HIV from a live donor. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the male kidney donor passed the initial screening, but in between the screening and the donation in 2009, had unprotected sex with another man. Testing on the patient a year after surgery confirmed he or she had contracted HIV.
Dr. Sandy Florman of Mt. Sinai (not where the surgery took place) told NY1, “The screening test for HIV is an antibody test and the window is about 10 weeks, so there is a period of 10 weeks from when the individual can be infected but the antibody does not convert and show up as positive on the test." The New York State Health Department is recommending transplant centers do a second round of testing on donors within a week of surgery.
Florman said, “This is life and death and there are people that are going to die because they didn't have the opportunity to get a transplant. So the responsibility is on the entire transplant community to recognize this is a tragic and unfortunate event, and if there are ways we can make living donation safer and instill confidence in the public, absolutely we are going to do it.” Last year, the widow of Vincent Liew sued NYU Medical Center for giving him a cancerous kidney transplant, and another family sued New York Presbyterian for giving a man a "diseased" heart. The only other known case of HIV transmission through a living organ donor was in Italy in 1989.
