Experts tell inquest of treatment problems
Zachary Gravatt’s odds of surviving meningococcal disease were poor when he arrived at hospital, but would have been better with earlier antibiotic treatment, an inquest heard.
His chances of getting out of alive were at best 80 per cent and at worst 50 per cent, estimated expert witness Associate Professor Mark Thomas.
Gravatt, a 22-year-old medical student, died at Auckland City Hospital at 7.15pm on July 8, 2009. He had woken at 4am with a headache, fever and severe groin painand arrived at the hospital at 1.35pm by ambulance.
The inquest was reopened last week after Gravatt’s parents received an anonymous letter alleging deficiencies in his care.
“He had an illness with a very high chance of mortality,” Thomas, an infectious diseases specialist told coroner Morag McDowell.
Gravatt died of meningococcal septicaemia. He was first thought to have influenza, having arrived during the 2009 influenza pandemic and because the two disease’s early symptoms can be similar.
Around 4.40pm he was given 750mg of the antibiotic cefuroxime to treat pneumonia, which can result from the flu virus. At 6.40pm, after meningococcal septicaemia was diagnosed, he was given 2000mg of ceftriaxone, another antibiotic.
Thomas said treatment earlier with an anti-meningococcal antibiotic “would have improved his chances of survival, but it is difficult to say by how much.”
Another expert witness, Dr David Knight, a Christchurch Hospital intensive care specialist, said the severity of Gravatt’s meningococcal disease might have been detected sooner if he was seen earlier by an experienced senior intensive care doctor.