Doctor on BA jet with dying Pret allergy girl wasn’t given medical kit
A COrONer has asked why a plane’s full medical kit was not offered to a doctor as he tried in vain to save the life of a girl who suffered a cardiac arrest.
Natasha ednan-Laperouse, 15, went into shock on a British Airways flight after suffering a severe allergic reaction to a baguette bought at a Heathrow Airport branch of Pret A manger.
This made her throat tighten and red hives flare across her midriff before causing the cardiac arrest.
Passenger Thomas Pearson-Jones, a junior doctor who had graduated from Oxford University the day before, performed CPr on Natasha but the crew did not fetch the on-board defibrillator, an inquest at West London Coroner’s Court was told.
The hearing was told that the plane was about to land and they decided it would have been too dangerous to get it from the rear of the cabin.
French paramedics did use a defibrillator on Natasha after the plane touched down in Nice but she died in hospital later that day. Coroner Dr Sean Cummings said: ‘Natasha was in extremis, she was
‘She was in severe distress’
dying in front of the plane, and I’m struggling with why the full range of kit wasn’t offered to Dr Pearson-Jones or why he wasn’t made aware of it.’ Clare Durrant, British Airways’ learning and development manager, replied: ‘At that stage, Natasha was breathing normally.’
Natasha’s father, millionaire businessman Nadim ednan-Laperouse, who had travelled on the flight with his daughter and her best friend, shook his head in court and mouthed: ‘She wasn’t’.
miss Durrant said a defibrillator would only be used on someone unconscious who had ‘agonal breathing’, which she described as abnormal and gasping for air. The coroner said: ‘That sounds like a quantum leap in terms of the judgments your crew are being asked to make. That doesn’t sound safe to me.
‘So even though Natasha was blue, not breathing, unresponsive and Dr Pearson- Jones had helped to commence CPr, are you saying the reason that the defibrillator was not fetched was because one of your crew members made a judgment to that effect, or that the plane was in the last throes of landing?’
miss Durrant replied: ‘It wasn’t safe to move through the cabin at that stage.’ Dr Cummings said it did not seem ‘ entirely logical’ to have some medical kit at the front of the plane and the defibrillator at the back.
The family’s lawyer, Jeremy Hyam QC, asked miss Durrant: ‘She was in severe distress... isn’t that agonal breathing?’ He later said: ‘How can it be a safe system to wait for cardiac arrest to arrive?’
Natasha had bought an artichoke, olive and tapenade baguette from Pret A manger at Heathrow’s Terminal 5. Sesame seeds ‘ hidden’ in its dough provoked a severe allergic anaphylactic reaction after she ate it.
Natasha, from Fulham, west London, was known to suffer from several food allergies and when she went into shock her father jabbed two epiPens into her leg.
expert witness Alex Croom, a consultant allergist, told the hearing that the pens may have been ineffective in this case because the needles were too short and they were both jabbed into the same thigh.
The inquest heard that resuscitation Council guidelines suggest 25mm is the best needle length for an injection treating an anaphylactic reaction and that those on Natasha’s pens were just 16mm long.
Asked if she thinks a standard prescription should have a 25mm length, Dr Croom said: ‘Yes, really.’
In her report to the coroner she said: ‘my opinion is that Natasha died as a result of anaphylaxis triggered by something she ate in the airport.’
On the subject of whether earlier defibrillation would have made a difference, she said: ‘I think it’s unlikely that it was an abnormal [heart] rhythm that needed correcting.’
The hearing continues.