Family sues HSE over death of daughter hours after she was discharged from hospital
Eve, age 21, collapsed at home with blood clots
A 21-YEAR-OLD woman died at home from a cardiac arrest brought on by blood clots just a few hours after questioning a hospital doctor as to whether she should be discharged, the High Court has heard.
Eve Cleary, from Corbally, Limerick, died at University Hospital Limerick (UHL) on July 21, 2019.
Her devastated family, led by her parents Barry Cleary and Melanie Sheehan, have taken legal action against the HSE, claiming damages and alleging that a risk assessment and precautionary blood thinning medication could have saved her life.
Opening the case yesterday, their barrister, Dr John O’Mahony SC, said that Eve had attended the hospital after slipping and injuring her lower leg while walking to her parents’ car on the evening of July 19, 2019.
He said an X-ray showed that no bones were broken, and that a CT scan revealed no abnormalities.
However, he said her lower leg was extremely swollen, and that when a hospital registrar advised her, shortly after 8pm on July 20, that she should go home, she questioned that decision.
‘Eve herself was apprehensive about that,’ Dr O’Mahony said. ‘She said, “I don’t feel well, doctor, are you sure?”’
The barrister said Ms Cleary told the registrar that she was concerned about her leg and calf, and that she had pins and needles in her toes.
‘The registrar said, “Don’t worry, everything will be okay, go home and rest”,’ he said.
She went home at around 8.30pm, and said she felt tired and wanted to go to bed at 11.15pm, the court heard.
However, shortly after that, she began to feel extremely unwell, and collapsed on the stairs.
Her shocked family called an ambulance, while her father, Barry, began to perform CPR on his daughter.
The ambulance crew, and subsequently the hospital, tried desperately to revive her but failed, and her death was recorded at 1.50am on July 21.
Her parents and five younger siblings, who had witnessed the whole thing, were ‘utterly distraught’, the barrister added.
Dr O’Mahony said expert witnesses would tell the court that a risk assessment should have been carried out.
He said trauma to a lower leg was a well-known cause of blood clots, and that Ms Cleary was at high risk due to factors including her weight and her 21-cigarettea-day habit.
‘Not to have suspected a clot, in my view, was an outlandish failure in the appropriate standard of care,’ he said.
It is alleged that the HSE allowed Ms Cleary to develop a deep vein thrombosis, which caused or materially contributed to the young woman’s death. The HSE had admitted that no risk assessment was performed, but had denied liability for her death, the barrister said.
Dr O’Mahony described the case as a ‘profoundly tragic one’ which would ‘bring a tear to a stone, it is so horrific and emotionally upsetting’.
An inquest previously heard that for 17 hours, Ms Cleary languished on a trolley in a foulsmelling section of a corridor in the hospital’s emergency department, which, at the time, was swamped by a ‘record’ number of trolleys. Her mother Ms Sheehan wept while giving evidence at the inquest that she saw her daughter’s leg swell to ‘three-and-a-half times’ its normal size in the hospital.
She said her daughter’s leg had turned dark red ‘like the colour of a Christmas ham’.
The High Court case continues before Judge Emily Egan.
‘An outlandish failure’