Use of bad organs in Ehime mostly unacceptable: panel
MATSUYAMA (Kyodo) A panel at Uwajima Municipal Hospital in Ehime Prefecture said Sunday that most of the 25 transplants and 20 extractions of diseased kidneys performed there by Makoto Mannami were medically unacceptable.

In a report, the panel of outside experts criticize Mannami for conducting inappropriate operations, including cancer kidney transplants and organ removals, without giving sufficient medical treatment. Mannami worked at the hospital until March 2004.

The report was submitted at a joint meeting with the hospital's investigation panel. Later Sunday, Mannami told reporters that he did not accept the report.

Mannami, a 66-year-old senior urologist currently employed by Uwajima Tokushukai Hospital also in Uwajima, is known to have conducted 11 transplants and 25 others at the municipal hospital since the 1990s.

The panel points out that the doctor transplanted kidneys from a patient who tested positive for hepatitis B, which can cause cirrhosis and cancer if a patient is infected and it develops into a chronic condition.

One of the experts says it was "unthinkable" to use a kidney with the highly infectious disease and "even medical interns know" how inappropriate it is to use such organs.

Among Mannami's operations, the panel severely criticized six kidney transplants that made use of kidneys from nephritic patients.

Nephrosis is an illness in which the kidneys excrete a protein into urine, causing a frequent urge to urinate.

The doctor took organs from three nephritic patients and used them in six transplants, the sources said.

Last month, a different panel of experts including those from the Japan Society for Transplantation, concluded that most of the 11 transplants at Uwajima Tokushukai Hospital should not have been given transplants.

But an investigative panel set up by the same hospital argued that of the six organ removal operations conducted there, one was "appropriate" and three others were "tolerable." But panel members were split on the two other cases, with one side seeing them as problematic but the other finding them acceptable