Dick Cheney Recieves Heart Transplant at 71

[zoobernut]

Okay, I'll give you that. I think his privilege and station had something to do with that. There.

Edit: Misread the post.

Maybe we need to address how people get onto the list, but then people would cry foul and cry death panels etc.

[Sera]

Edit: Misread the post.

Maybe we need to address how people get onto the list, but then people would cry foul and cry death panels etc.

lol yeah. People get really oversensitive but it's a matter of pragmatism. A 71 year old whose heart tissue has been destroyed with 5 heart attacks is flat out just not the best use of a donor heart. He shouldn't have been considered imo. I'm not afraid to say this. It's insensitive, i guess. But that doesn't make it less true.

[zoobernut]

lol yeah. People get really oversensitive but it's a matter of pragmatism. A 71 year old whose heart tissue has been destroyed with 5 heart attacks is flat out just not the best use of a donor heart. He shouldn't have been considered imo. I'm not afraid to say this. It's insensitive, i guess. But that doesn't make it less true.

There is a small possibility (emphasis on small but not impossible) that the heart he was given had no other people that it could have possibly gone to. Even if there were other compatible people across the country the heart does not survive long enough and needs to be transplanted very fast before it is no longer good. Maybe there just wasn't any other people on the list he was on that could use that heart. I would rather see the heart used in that scenario than go to waste just because the person who could use it is too old and in too poor health.

Though I would point out that his overall health in other aspects besides his heart had to be generally good otherwise they wouldn't have bothered to put him on the list. They do check that sort of thing out.

[Gregorio]

Okay, I'll give you that. I think his privilege and station had something to do with that. There.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...MPLATE=DEFAULT

"We have done several patients hovering around age 70" although that's about "the upper limit" for a transplant, said Dr. Mariell Jessup, a University of Pennsylvania heart failure specialist and American Heart Association spokeswoman. "The fact he waited such a long time shows he didn't get any favors."

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/dick-...9#.T3ovMGFSQg9

Some medical centers will not perform a heart transplant on patient over 65, but other major centers will perform transplants on patients who are as old as 72.

In any case, transplants at Cheney's age are not unheard of: Last year 332 heart transplants were performed on people over 65, and according to the United Network for Organ Sharing, 14 percent of recepients are over the age of 65.

"Patients from 18 all the way up to 71 years old, are on the same national list and you're listed on the basis of medical urgency and then how long you've been waiting," said Dr. Jonathan Chen, an adjunct associate professor of surgery at Columbia University in New York.

"Twenty months, as an outpatient, [is] not [an] unusually long wait," Dr. Marrick Kukin, director of heart failure at St. Lukes Roosevelt in New York said.

But Dr. Keith Aaronson, medical director of the heart failure program at the University of Michigan said 20 months "is a relatively long waiting time for an LVAD recipient to wait for a heart transplant."

Can this thread stop now?

[Chun Liroy]

The fact he waited doesn't show that he got any favors, the fact that he was there to begin with shows he did.

[Gregorio]

The fact he waited doesn't show that he got any favors, the fact that he was there to begin with shows he did.

Ignoring the fact that there's no way you can know this unless you were on the transplant team that evaluated him in the first place, there's been no evidence of that whatsoever. Even Democrats who are using Cheney's case as an excuse to champion Obamacare are not claiming foul play of any kind.