Transplant team, pilots die in EMS plane crash

During the operation, the transplant team was more nervous than usual.

Doctors and other team members were trying to cope with the loss of six colleagues who died two days earlier when a plane crashed in Lake Michigan as it returned with donor organs. Now they were doing a double-lung transplant on the Michigan man who was supposed to receive the organs at the University of Michigan Health System in Ann Arbor, Mich.

The operation was a success, and the unidentified patient is recovering. So is the transplant staff at U-M.

Physicians said transplants have resumed and they are doing their best to move forward following the tragedy. "We will always remember and miss our colleagues. But our mission here is for patient care. We might be short-staffed a little bit, but not enough to affect our operations," said Andrew Chang, MD, surgical director of lung transplant at the health system, which includes three hospitals.

About 5 p.m. on June 4, a twin-engine plane carrying a U-M transplant team of two surgeons and two transplant donation specialists crashed in Lake Michigan just east of Milwaukee. One of the plane's two pilots reported a control problem minutes after takeoff and was trying to return to the airport. The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating.

Killed were U-M cardiac surgeon Martinus "Martin" Spoor, MD; David Ashburn, MD, who was set to start a pediatric cardiothoracic surgery fellowship in July; donation specialists Richard Chenault II and Richard Lapensee; and pilots Dennis Hoyes and Bill Serra.

The NTSB investigated 55 emergency medical service flight crashes occurring between January 2002 and January 2005. The agency's report last year found recurring safety problems on the flights, which transport seriously ill patients or donor organs.

Survival Flight, U-M's air ambulance program, averages 1,200 patient transports and 150 organ donation transports each year and had no previous major problems, officials said.

"You know the risks. It's in the back of your mind, but your focus remains on that patient," said Mark Lowell, MD, Survival Flight's medical director.

The U-M Transplant Center has about 125 surgeons, nurses, perfusionists and transplant coordinators who do more than 400 transplants a year in adults and children. The center has 15 transplant surgeons, and U-M officials said the program has enough doctors and other health care professionals to continue performing transplants.

"We have not suspended any clinical operations. It's our mission to go forward," said Robert P. Kelch, MD, the university's executive vice president for medical affairs.

The U-M transplant team learned early June 6 that a second set of donor lungs was available for the 50-year-old Michigan man with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease who was waiting for donor organs when the plane crashed.

Once the organs were transported to the hospital, the surgery started that night. Doctors finished transplanting the second set of lungs early June 7.

"I do think there's a sense of returning to normal," said Jeffrey Punch, MD, U-M's director of the division of transplantation.