Arguing doctors forces stop to Leiden hospital organ transplants

The Leiden University Medical Center is temporarily not performing any liver and complex kidney transplant operations because of a conflict between doctors "about their mutual work method", the hospital announced on Thursday, news wire ANP reports. Efforts to mediate were unsuccessful and three of the seven surgeons are currently not working. The surgeries were moved to the Erasmus MC in Rotterdam because a large "surgical team" is necessary to perform complex operations like kidney and liver transplants. Smaller surgeries are still possible. Erasmus MC has been handling the LUMC surgeries since mid-December, but the hospital only announced the measure a month later because "we expected that there would be a solution in the short-term, but the situation is lasting longer than we ourselves expected", a spokesperson said to the news wire. The hospital would not say what the conflict is about, why the three surgeons aren't working, whether they are still being paid or whether they still have a future at the hospital. LUMC informed the Healthcare Inspectorate about the situation last month. "We have no indications that there that the patient care is unsafe. There are also no known calamities in the department", a spokesperson said.