VANCOUVER—A B.C. Transplant doctor says he did not mislead a Vancouver widow about an alcohol-abstinence rule for liver transplant patients.

“I definitely did not lie to the patient’s wife, although I can understand why she is upset,” Vancouver General Hospital gastroenterologist Dr. Eric Yoshida wrote in an statement emailed on Wednesday.

Yoshida was responding to Gagan Grewal’s allegation that he told her and her husband, Gaurav Chopra, as recently as July 11 there it was a strict rule that patients had to abstain from alcohol for six months before they could be considered for a place on the liver transplant list.

Chopra died from liver disease on Aug. 3, four months after his wife said he stopped drinking alcohol in an effort to qualify for a transplant.

Grewal saw Yoshida, a member of the liver transplant program, on the news Aug. 16 saying the policy was changed in May after another man with liver disease filed a complaint with the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal over the abstinence policy.

“It is so shocking that doctors can lie,” she said in an interview with Star Vancouver last week.

In his email, Yoshida confirmed the six-month abstinence rule changed in May, and “our liver transplant program has abolished it as an absolute requirement.”

He said he was “truly saddened by the patient’s passing” and that he advocated for the elimination of the abstinence policy and for Chopra. “It had been my hope that we could get him on the list for a liver transplant.”

Yoshida explained the liver transplant team tries to assess and minimize the risk that a patient will drink alcohol after a transplant, and makes a recommendation about transplant eligibility that includes concerns unrelated to disease.

He said the decision is not absolute and can be re-evaluated after discussions with transplant program members, which includes surgeons and other health-care professionals.

“The original decision and recommendations can change in the patient’s favour ... there are many reasons why patients may not receive a life-saving transplant,” said Yoshida, who is travelling in Europe and just had the chance to respond to questions about transplant eligibility.

He noted B.C. has a “tragic disparity” between the number of people who need a transplant and the number of donors. “We cannot accommodate everyone, but we are fair to everybody and we maximize the likelihood of saving patients’ lives.”

On Aug. 13, David Dennis, a 42-year-old Indigenous man of Nuu-chah-nulth ancestry, filed a complaint with the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal over the six-month abstinence policy, saying it discriminated against him on the grounds of race, ancestry and physical disability.

Two days later, representatives from BC Transplant said the policy had been changed in May and there had likely been a miscommunication. They said Dennis was now being assessed for a transplant.

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“We apologize for any upset caused,” BC Transplant operations director Ed Ferre said in a statement at the time, calling the incident “a misunderstanding of the guidelines and processes around liver transplantation.”

The same day, Yoshida told Star Vancouver the alleged miscommunication with Dennis was “a complete mystery.”

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