The Trust did not properly assess Mr H's suitability to donate his kidney to his wife

What happened

Mrs H had chronic kidney disease. When she was diagnosed, Mr H expressed an interest in becoming a live kidney donor, and blood tests confirmed he was a match.

A consultant nephrologist (a kidney specialist) reviewed Mrs H in 2006. At this appointment, the consultant decided that Mr H would not be a suitable kidney donor because he had a mild congenital disease and a recent E. coli urinary tract infection. This decision was based purely on information given by Mr and Mrs H.

In 2007, a consultant transplant surgeon reviewed Mrs H. Following this appointment, she was added to the national transplant list and received a deceased donor kidney in 2009. Unfortunately, this kidney's function was not up to standard and doctors decided that she needed another transplant. Mr H was tested and found to be a suitable donor. Mrs H had a successful transplant with Mr H's kidney in 2012.

What we found

We partly upheld this complaint. There had been no evidence?based assessment of Mr H's suitability as a kidney donor. Therefore, we considered that the consultant transplant surgeon should have explored this option in 2007 and documented his decision. He failed to follow good clinical practice when he did not do this.

Mr and Mrs H said that as a result of these failings, Mrs H had suffered ill health and this had affected their welfare. Mr H said that he had been on antidepressants because he was unable to donate a kidney to his wife.

There was an unreasonable delay in copies of medical records being sent to Mr and Mrs H when they requested these.

Putting it right

We concluded that, on the balance of probabilities, Mr H would have been found to be a suitable donor for his wife in 2007. However, we could not say that the failings identified led to the claimed injustice. This is because these resulted from the deceased kidney transplant being unsuccessful.

In our view there was a missed opportunity for Mr H to donate his kidney to his wife earlier. We concluded that this had caused uncertainty for Mr and Mrs H through not knowing whether the outcome could have been different had Mr H been retested in 2007.

During the course of our investigation, the Trust told us about the action it proposed to take as a result of the failings we identified. In our view, this was sufficient to resolve the primary concerns Mr and Mrs H had raised. The Trust apologised to Mr and Mrs H for the failings we found.