Trinidad Hospitals say they are not to blame for child’s death

(Guardian.co.tt) – Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer at the North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA) Davlin Thomas said med­ical staff at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex were “dis­heart­ened” that they could not save a 12-year old girl from St Vincent di­ag­nosed with a can­cer­ous brain tu­mour.

He said the child was brought to the Pae­di­atric Emer­gency De­part­ment (PED) at Mount Hope on­ly af­ter suf­fer­ing com­pli­ca­tions from brain surgery at the St Au­gus­tine Pri­vate Hos­pi­tal. Her surgery at that pri­vate hos­pi­tal had tak­en place a month ear­li­er.

Thomas is­sued a state­ment after the child’s moth­er, St Vin­cent na­tion­al Soflyn Roberts, claimed neg­li­gence at the Mount Hope Hos­pi­tal was re­spon­si­ble for her daugh­ters’ death.

The NCHRA list­ed the surg­eries the child un­der­went be­fore be­ing ad­mit­ted to the PED at My Hope, in­clud­ing surgery in St Vin­cent in Oc­to­ber and a more re­cent one at St Au­gus­tine Pri­vate Hos­pi­tal on No­vem­ber 1.

Fol­low­ing that op­er­a­tion in No­vem­ber, the pa­tient was treat­ed on mul­ti­ple oc­ca­sions at the PED, “in­clud­ing De­cem­ber 4, when she com­plained about vom­it­ing and on De­cem­ber 7 when she pre­sent­ed to the PED with seizures”.

“On De­cem­ber 20 she again pre­sent­ed to the Emer­gency De­part­ment with an in­fect­ed wound and a blocked shunt,” the NCRHA said.

“Fol­low­ing her ad­mis­sion, the med­ical team at the EWM­SC re­al­ized that ur­gent surgery was re­quired to ad­dress the in­fec­tion and to clear the block­age. The moth­er in­di­cat­ed that she was not ready to sign con­sent at the time, de­spite be­ing coun­seled on the ur­gent na­ture of the case,” the hos­pi­tal said.

“Ap­proval for the emer­gency surgery was not grant­ed by her moth­er un­til lat­er that night. The surgery was per­formed and Jas­mine was ad­mit­ted to the Peds ICU,” the NCRHA said.

The NCRHA said that de­spite their best ef­forts, the pa­tient’s con­di­tion con­tin­ued to de­te­ri­o­rate. She ex­pe­ri­enced seizures, de­creased res­pi­ra­to­ry rate and oth­er breath­ing is­sues which re­quired in­tu­ba­tion on Christ­mas Eve.

“A fol­low-up CT scan showed brain dam­age and lat­er tests con­firmed this di­ag­no­sis,” the NCRHA said.

The NCRHA is de­fend­ing it­self against re­ports that its neg­li­gence led to the child’s death.

“The mi­nor of Ms Wil­son re­ceived ex­cel­lent sup­port, close mon­i­tor­ing and in­ten­sive care from the med­ical team at the EWM­SC. This in­clud­ed an ag­gres­sive an­tibi­ot­ic reg­i­men and nu­mer­ous CT scans to as­cer­tain ac­cu­rate di­ag­no­sis and guid­ance for the pro­gres­sion of care, as doc­tors sought to in­ter­vene to man­age the crit­i­cal med­ical sit­u­a­tion that was fac­ing the pa­tient,” the NCRHA said.

But while the NCRHA seemed to blame St Au­gus­tine Pri­vate Hos­pi­tal for the child’s death, of­fi­cials at the pri­vate hos­pi­tal said it was not at fault. Med­ical Di­rec­tor Dr. Ajit Udit, in a brief in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, said the shunt was im­plant­ed in St Vin­cent be­fore the pa­tient was trans­ferred to Trinidad for ur­gent surgery.

“The neu­ro­sur­geon op­er­at­ed and she was well and dis­charged,” Udit said.

He said there were no com­pli­ca­tions be­fore, dur­ing or af­ter the surgery on the child and she spent sev­er­al days re­cu­per­at­ing at the pri­vate hos­pi­tal be­fore be­ing dis­charged “in a good state”.

“The shunt, which be­came blocked had to be re­done was done at Mt Hope and then the pa­tient de­vel­oped fur­ther com­pli­ca­tions,” he said.

“I un­der­stand that the moth­er failed to give con­sent for fur­ther op­er­a­tions and pa­tient fit­ted and ar­rest­ed,” he said.