UCSF Clarifies Policy on Marijuana Use and Transplant Eligibility

ABC News San Francisco (KGO) reports on the case of a Utah man, recovering from a lung transplant in Pennsylvania after a Utah hospital refused to put him on their transplant list because of past marijuana use. (The man subsequently died after the airing of the KGO story.) UCSF transplant surgeon, Ryutaro Hirose, M.D., was interviewed by KGO and regarding the policy on this is issue at UCSF.

"We've recently liberalized our criteria regarding marijuana," said Dr. Ryutaro Hirose who is a transplant surgeon at UCSF, the country's busiest transplant center.

Unlike the hospital in Utah, UCSF and other medical centers in California are forbidden by state law to deny a patient solely because of marijuana use. UCSF no longer tests for THC.

But they do ask patients if they use marijuana and other substances and to what extent -- one of many questions doctors say helps them determine who will thrive post-surgery.

"We don't have enough organs to go around for all the people who need them, and so what we do in terms of selection is to try and determine who is going to do best," said Hirose.