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Letter to the editor

Plane crash could claim patient, too

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published June 6, 2007

ANN ARBOR, Mich. - The patient lay on the operating table, prepped for transplant surgery. In the air over Lake Michigan, a twin-engine plane sped his way, carrying a team of surgeons and technicians, along with a donor organ on ice.

The plane never made it, crashing into the lake's choppy waters and killing all six people aboard Monday.

Now the critically ill patient could become the accident's seventh fatality.

"It was a very sad moment in the operating room" when word was received that the plane had gone down on its way from Milwaukee, said Dr. Jeffrey Punch, chief of transplant surgery at the University of Michigan Health System hospital in Ann Arbor.

Hospital officials and organ-donation authorities would not identify the transplant patient, and would not say what type of organ he was awaiting, citing privacy rules. But one of the doctors killed was a cardiac surgeon, suggesting the patient was about to get a new heart or lungs.

He was put back on the waiting list for another organ and was reported to be "very critically ill." Authorities would not comment on his chances of finding another organ in time.

The Cessna Citation crashed about 5 p.m., shortly after takeoff on a flight to Ann Arbor that should have taken 42 minutes. One of the pilots reported severe difficulty steering the plane.

Killed were pilots Dennis Hoyes and Bill Serra, surgeons Martin Spoor and David Ashburn and transplant technicians Richard Chenault and Richard LaPensee.

The plane hit the water at about 190 mph, authorities said. By midday Tuesday, only small parts of the aircraft - including pilot seats and small pieces of the cockpit - had been found, the Coast Guard said.

[Last modified June 6, 2007, 01:06:00]