Little did I know the care my mother was getting was below standard and her life hung in the balance
A GRANDMOTHER suffered fatal internal bleeding after medical staff at Wexford General Hospital missed several opportunities to intervene to address her deteriorating condition, an inquest has heard.
A verdict of medical misadventure was returned in the death of Marie Lynch after Wexford county coroner Seán Nixon said there had been delays in treatment being provided to the patient.
Ms Lynch, 75, a mother of five who lived at St Aidan’s Villas, Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford, died at Wexford General Hospital on March 24, 2021.
An inquest into her death at Wexford Coroner’s Court in Gorey yesterday also heard claims that she had suffered internal blood loss as a result of anti-blood clotting medicine that she had been given for longer than was necessary.
Speaking after the inquest, Ms Lynch’s daughter, Wendy Walsh, said she and her siblings had been unable to visit their mother in hospital due to Covid-19 restrictions.
‘I will forever regret not asking more questions’
She said she last spoke to her mother on March 23, 2021 when she had complained about vomiting and passing blood.
‘Little did I know that the care she was receiving was below standard and her life hung in the balance,’ said Ms Walsh. ‘I trusted in a system which would eventually take the most precious person from me.’
Ms Walsh said she felt ‘sick to the pit of my stomach’ after reading reports from the hospital about her mother which admitted mistakes but offered no apology.
Welcoming the verdict of medical misadventure, Ms Walsh said her family had to push for a postmortem to be carried out to establish the cause of her death.
‘I will forever regret not asking more questions. Not pushing harder to get in to see her, knowing that if I had, I would not have left until she was taken care of,’ she said.
Solicitor for Ms Lynch’s family, Ambrose Cuddy, said she was admitted for treatment to Wexford General Hospital on March 11, 2021, with a painful leg following a fall and had been diagnosed with cellulitis.
The inquest heard she was given an anticoagulant to prevent blood clots from March 18, 2021, which was prescribed in increased doses from the following day.
Mr Cuddy said a CT scan to check for clots on the lung was ordered on Friday, March 19, 2021, but it was not carried out until three days later.
Mr Cuddy said the CT scan taken on March 22, 2021 showed there was no clot on the patient’s lung but her treatment with the anticoagulant was not stopped for another 24 hours even though her condition was deteriorating.
By the following day, the solicitor said Ms Lynch was vomiting blood and also passing blood in her stool as well as suffering nosebleeds. Mr Cuddy said her extensive bleeding could have been addressed by a blood transfusion.
Ms Lynch died on March 24, 2021, after suffering a cardiac arrest. A postmortem showed she had died as a result of hypovolemic shock due to blood loss at multiple sites in her body. Pathologist Mutaz Nur said he could not say the use of the anti-coagulant was definitely responsible for the blood loss but accepted it was probably a contributory factor. Cross-examined by Mr Cuddy, Dr Nur said it was not possible to say when the blood loss had started but he agreed there had been a significant loss of blood in a short time. A consultant physician at Wexford General Hospital, Professor Colm Quigley, said it was standard practice to give an anticoagulant to a patient who was at risk of deep vein thrombosis.
However, Prof Quigley admitted he was unhappy that a CT scan he ordered for Ms Lynch on March 19, 2021, was not carried out for another three days.
Offering his condolences to Ms Lynch’s relatives, he said staff at the hospital would be happy to meet with them if they still had questions.
Returning a verdict of medical misadventure, Dr Nixon said there was evidence ‘of a lot of missed opportunities’ and a failure to escalate treatment for Ms Lynch’s deteriorating condition.
The coroner said there had also been a significant delay in carrying out the CT scan on Ms Lynch and in addressing her internal bleeding, particularly in the final 24 hours of her life, and that there had also been an issue with maintaining correct and adequate medical notes about her care. news@dailymail.ie