Another Rabies Death Reported After Organ Transplant

Woman Receives Infected Blood Vessel

July 9, 2004

DALLAS -- A fourth person has died of rabies after receiving a transplant from a man who didn't know he was infected.

The latest death involves a patient who received an infected blood vessel from the late William Beed Jr. of Arkansas. The unidentified woman reportedly died around the same time last week as three other Baylor transplant patients who had received organs from Beed.

However, officials said that at the time of the woman's death it wasn't clear she had received an infected organ. Doctors made the discovery at about 3:30 a.m. Thursday.

The transplants were performed at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas after Beed died in May.

Doctors said they did not immediately know the vessel had come from the infected donor because there was no database at the bank keeping track of which vessels were harvested from which donors and which patients received those tissues.

"There is no master file," Dr. Henry Randall said. "We do have ... a label that's on the blood vessels. But there is no master file database that that information would subsequently be entered into."

Baylor officials said they're still conducting tests, but that there's no chance of more infections because tissue and organs are destroyed after seven days.

Baylor's chief of the infectious diseases department said all the tissue from this donor has been either used or destroyed.

Donated organs are never tested for rabies.

Distributed by Internet Broadcasting Systems, Inc. The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2004 Internet Broadcasting Systems, Inc.

This article posted July 26, 2004.