UPMC's transplant suspension said to be unique

UPMC's decision Monday to voluntarily suspend its entire adult transplant program appears to be the first time that an American hospital has stopped transplanting organs because of a suspected mold outbreak, government and agency officials said. "I can't think of any other" transplant program that was ever suspended because of mold infections, said Mary Brandt, chief of the mycotic disease branch of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In response to the revelation over the last week that four transplant patients contracted fungal infections — three of them later dying — at UPMC's transplant program, the CDC sent a team of four fungal investigators to Pittsburgh on Tuesday to begin an investigation, along with the Pennsylvania Department of Health.