A baby girl with a congenital heart condition died after paramedics failed to consider her condition as an emergency. Lacey-Marie Poton died in the arms of her mother, Emma Norley, four hours after being brought to the Bristol Royal Hospital for Children on July 2013. An inquest will be concluded on Friday.
Lacey-Marie was born with a complicated heart condition and underwent three operations in the same hospital in 2013. The four-month old baby had a hole in her heart which makes her condition 'critical' at all times especially at her fragile age.
On July 24, 2013, she had a stent procedure in order to promote and improve oxygen flow to her lungs. The next day, she began vomiting. When she was discharged two days after, she seemed weak, shivering and pale on their way home. Emma has reported her baby's condition to the hospital but was advised to take her baby to a general practitioner. She was told that there is nothing to worry about.
However, a few minutes upon reaching home, Lacey-Marie had a cardiac arrest. Emma conducted CPR while waiting for the ambulance. Paramedics arrived 10 minutes later but failed to triage the baby's condition properly. They thought that nothing was wrong with the baby.
Even if Emma had informed the telephone operator that the patient was a baby with a heart condition, the ambulance that arrived was not properly equipped. Subsequently, the baby's condition was not triaged as an emergency or an urgent condition and the blue light was not used throughout their travel from their residence to the hospital. Seemingly, even when the infant was having a difficult time breathing and was crying hysterically, still, she was not attended to by the paramedics.
When they arrived at the hospital, staff were 'shouting' at the paramedics because they were not informed about the arrival of a patient. Again, CPR was done when Lacey-Marie had stopped breathing again. It was not until another 15 minutes that the cardiologist arrived.
Though Lacey-Marie's condition became stable and was admitted in the hospital's intensive care unit, her condition depreciated and deteriorated drastically which left doctors to assume that she only has a 50% chance of survival.
"I was crying my eyes out and begged him (the cardiologist) to save her. I ran into the intensive care unit and held Lacey-Marie in my arms as she passed away," Emma Norley recalled.
Lacey-Marie passed away and post-mortem examination revealed that her cause of death was congenital heart disease and Down's syndrome. Dr. Michael Ashworth, pathologist, explained that the baby has a large hole in her heart and apparently, her vessels have severely narrowed. This makes it hard for the baby to breath and pump oxygenated blood to the different parts of her body.
The South Western Ambulance Service released an internal report that the staff and crew of the ambulance failed to recognize the time critical nature of the baby and hence, conveyed the patient at normal road speed without a pre-alert to the hospital. One of the paramedics, Kevin Brown said in the hearing that the baby seemed alert and had a normal color when they arrived.
During the hearing, it was revealed that the ambulance took 22 minutes and 19 seconds to transfer the baby to the hospital. The inquest was adjourned for the day and has resumed on Friday.
