Vincent Liew had new kidney for two months before transplant doctor realized it was cancerous

BY Thomas Zambito and Corky Siemaszko
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS

Wednesday, May 19th 2010, 1:36 AM

A stroke victim whose donated kidney wound up killing a Queens man didn't know she had uterine cancer.

Nor did her family - or the doctor who transplanted the toxic organ into Vincent Liew.

It wasn't until two months after Liew, 37, received the kidney that the doomed man's NYU doctor learned donor Sandy Cabrera, 50, had cancer.

After the revelation, Dr. Thomas Diflo and Liew decided not to remove the kidney - which cost the diabetes patient his life five months later.

"You have no doubt that the cancer came from the transplanted kidney?" James McCarthy, lawyer for Liew's widow, Kimberly, asked in Queens Supreme Court Tuesday.

"Correct," Diflo testified on the first day of questioning in Kimberly Liew's suit against NYU.

It was unclear why it took two months for Diflo to find out Cabrera had uterine cancer, discovered during her autopsy at another hospital.

Also, the specter of more transplanted time bombs was raised since Liew was not the only person who got an organ from Cabrera.

Another patient received her right kidney, NYU lawyer Robert Elliott told the court in his opening argument, without elaborating on the person's fate.

"There were several recipients from the donor in the New York area," Elliott said.

Cabrera had a history of high blood pressure - but not cancer - when she was suddenly felled by a stroke in February 2002, Elliott said.

Her family backs up that account.

"To my knowledge, there was no confirmation or diagnosis that my mother had cancer," Cabrera's daughter, Dana Cabrera, 27, of Brooklyn, told the Daily News.

"She was an active woman," added Cabrera's brother, Damon Taylor, 61, of Newburgh. "She really didn't have any medical problems that we knew about. This just came out of nowhere."

Had doctors known about the silent killer lurking in Cabrera's kidney, her organs would not have been harvested after she died at St. Luke's Cornwall Hospital in Newburgh.

Once the mistake was made, doctors should have immediately removed the diseased organ, the suit charges.

The decision to leave it in doomed Liew to an agonizing death from a disease only women are supposed to get.

Clad in a black raincoat, Liew's grieving widow watched the lawyers spar over her husband's death from a front-row seat, but declined to discuss the case after Justice Peter O'Donoghue imposed a gag order.

Diflo said the question of whether to remove the kidney was not an easy one.

"There had never been a report of a tumor like this being transferred from donor to recipient," said Diflo, who said he has heard of three similar cases since Liew's death.

NYU insists it tested the organ and found evidence Liew's body might be rejecting it, but no cancer.

"I told Mr. Liew the safest thing to do would be to take the kidney out" but Liew was adamant that he wanted to give it a try, the doctor said.

"We came to the conclusion together that we should leave the kidney in."

Yet Liew's lawyer said that when Diflo found out the kidney had cancer, "he told Vincent and Kimberly, 'Don't worry about it, leave it in.'"

McCarthy said that was a bad call because Liew's immune system was suppressed to prevent organ rejection - and that enabled the cancer to spread.

"Had they removed the kidney at the time they found out, Vincent Liew would be okay," McCarthy said. "These decisions cost Vincent Liew his life, caused Kimberly Liew to lose her husband."

From: http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2010/05/19/2010-05-19_his_new_kidney_was_time_bomb_more_than_2_months_before_docs_knew_it_was_filled_w.html