TEXAS – For decades, Dr Steve Bynon Jr, a transplant surgeon in Texas, gained accolades and national prominence for his work, including by helping to enforce professional standards in the United States’ sprawling organ transplant system.

But officials are now investigating allegations that Dr Bynon was secretly manipulating a government database to make some of his own patients ineligible to receive new livers, potentially depriving them of lifesaving care.

Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center in Houston, where Dr Bynon oversaw both the liver and kidney transplant programmes, abruptly shut those down in the past week while looking into the allegations.

On April 11, the medical centre, a teaching hospital affiliated with the University of Texas, said in a statement that a doctor in its liver transplant programme had admitted to changing patient records. That effectively denied the transplants, the hospital said.

Officials identified the physician as Dr Bynon, who is employed by the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth Houston), and has had a contract to lead Memorial Hermann’s abdominal transplant programme since 2011.

It was not clear what could have motivated Dr Bynon. Reached by phone on April 11, he referred questions to UTHealth Houston, which declined to comment. Dr Bynon did not confirm he had admitted to altering records.

Founded in 1925, Memorial Hermann is a major hospital in Houston, but it has a relatively small liver transplant programme. In 2023, it performed 29 liver transplants, according to US federal data, making it one of the smallest programmes in Texas.

In recent years, a disproportionate number of Memorial Hermann patients have died while waiting for a liver, data shows.

In 2023, 14 patients were taken off the centre’s waiting list because they either died or became too sick, and its mortality rate for people waiting for a transplant was higher than expected, according to The Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients, a US research group.

In 2024, as of March, five patients had died or become too sick to receive a liver transplant, while the hospital had performed three transplants, records show.

The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said in a statement that it was also investigating the allegations. So is the United Network for Organ Sharing, the federal contractor that oversees the US organ transplant system.

“We acknowledge the severity of this allegation,” the HHS statement said. “We are working diligently to address this issue with the attention it deserves.”

Officials began investigating after being alerted by a complaint. An analysis then found what the hospital called “irregularities” in how patients were classified on a waiting list for liver transplants.

When doctors place a patient on the list, they must identify the types of donors they would consider, including the person’s age and weight. Hospital officials said they found patients had been listed as accepting only donors with ages and weights that were impossible – for instance, a 136kg toddler – making them unable to receive any transplant.

Other transplant surgeons said if the list was tampered with, patients would not be aware of changes in their status.

“They’re sitting at home, maybe not travelling, thinking they could get an organ offer any time, but in reality, they’re functionally inactive, and so they’re not going to get that transplant,” said Dr Sanjay Kulkarni, the vice-chair of the ethics committee at the United Network for Organ Sharing.

“It’s highly unusual, I’ve never heard of it before, and it’s also highly inappropriate.”

The hospital said in its statement that it did not know how many patients were affected by the changes, or when they began. It said the issues affected only the liver transplant programme, but the hospital also closed the kidney transplant programme because it was led by the same doctor.

Dr Bynon, 64, has spent his career in abdominal transplants and is considered one of the early practitioners of advanced liver transplants. He spent nearly 20 years at the University of Alabama at Birmingham before moving to Texas in 2011.

Some former colleagues described Dr Bynon as off-putting and arrogant, while others called him talented and dedicated.

“In my experience, everything he did was about the patient,” said Dr Brendan McGuire, the medical director of liver transplants at that Alabama programme, who worked with Dr Bynon for more than a decade. “When he transplanted someone, that person was his patient for life.”

On its LinkedIn page, UTHealth Houston once featured a photo of a billboard with Dr Bynon on it. The sign said: “Dr Bynon gives new life to transplant patients.”

Dr Bynon also served on the membership and professional standards committee of the United Network for Organ Sharing, which investigates wrongdoing in the transplant system.

Most recently, in December 2023, Dr Bynon made headlines for performing a kidney transplant for former Lieutenant-Governor Ben Barnes of Texas.

The closure of the programmes at Memorial Hermann has surprised many in the transplant community because it is rare for a programme to be suspended over ethical issues.

At the time it shut down its programmes, Memorial Hermann had 38 patients on its liver transplant waiting list and 346 patients on its kidney list, according to the hospital.

Officials said they were contacting those patients to help them find new providers. NYTIMES