On January 10, a healthy 57 year old man underwent a liver donation procedure that successfully resected approximately 60% of the right lobe of his liver in preparation for transplanting that liver into his brother, a 54 year old man who suffered from a degenerative liver disease.

After what was described as a technically uneventful transplant, the donor patient seemed to do well on the first postoperative day.  He began to manifest some tachycardia late on the second postoperative day.  Early on the third post-operative day, he began to hiccup and complained of being nauseated.  He was given symptomatic treatment.  Later that day he began to vomit brownish material.  He became oxygen-desaturated and was placed on 100% oxygen by mask.  He continued to vomit, aspirated and suffered a cardiac arrest from which he was not resuscitated and he was pronounced dead on the third post-operative day.