Monday, April 21, 2008

Negligent Australian public hospital kills little kid

Every day Katey Locock looks at her baby daughter Jasmine and her heart breaks. Seven months ago Mrs Locock and her husband, Gayvn, were overjoyed at the birth of Jasmine and her twin Gemma, sisters for two-year-old Amber. But last month Gemma died of heart failure after acquiring Kawasaki disease, an inflammatory condition, which can be treated simply if detected. The Lococks say doctors at John Hunter Children's Hospital in Newcastle failed to diagnose the condition, despite telltale symptoms - and they want to know why. "Every time we do something for Jasmine we know we should be doing it for Gemma as well. It breaks our hearts," Mrs Locock said. Jasmine knows something's wrong. She has not been the same since her sister died, her parents say.

Gemma spent four days in hospital after she became ill with what her parents say were distinctive symptoms of Kawasaki disease, including a persistent high fever for more than five days, severe rash, red lips, red eyes and peeling skin on her hands and feet. Her parents say they were told to take their daughter home. Six weeks later she died. "The doctors kept saying it was a mystery and just gave her Panadol. They only ever ran one blood test," Mrs Locock said from her Belmont home. "But she had at least four symptoms [of Kawasaki disease]. If they had done their job properly, Gemma would still be with us today."

Kawasaki disease, an uncommon illness that mostly affects children under five, causes inflammation of small blood vessels known as vasculitis. In extreme cases the coronary arteries swell, which can block the blood supply to the heart. Most children recover after receiving a simple intravenous drip of gammaglobulin - an ingredient of the blood that helps fight infection - and a high dose of aspirin to reduce the risk of heart damage.

The Lococks say doctors failed to order an echocardiogram, which would have shown the heart damage. Mrs Locock also made two visits to the family GP, which resulted only in a prescription for reflux medication. On March 16, Gemma began having breathing difficulties and within two hours she was dead. "It was such a shock, it all happened so fast," Mrs Locock said.

The day after Gemma's death, Jasmine and Amber were summoned to the hospital for blood tests. When Jasmine's test showed abnormalities, the Lococks say they were forced to wait another day for her echocardiogram because no one was available to do it. "We'd already lost one baby and time was crucial but they still made us wait," Mrs Locock said. Jasmine was eventually given the gammaglobulin drip as a precaution and is healthy.

Gemma's great-grandfather, Terry McCormack, said her death had "devastated our family". He has launched a blog - http://www.macterry.blogspot.com - inviting parents who have had "unsatisfactory dealings" with the John Hunter Children's Hospital to contact him.

"This is a devastating situation and we understand and share the grief that the family is experiencing," the hospital said in a statement on Friday. It said Gemma displayed only one clinical feature - skin rash. "It would be extremely difficult for any doctor to diagnose Kawasaki disease solely by the presence of a skin rash in the absence of the other signs of the condition," it said. The hospital said the Locock family had been invited to meet senior doctors once the final post-mortem examination report was completed.

Source

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I AM THE GRANDMOTHER OF GEMMA LOCOCK .We are devasted to what happened to our baby girl this is australia not athird wourld BLOODY COUTNTRY.kd is not as rare as we were told ITS NEGLEGENCE.WE WONT ANSEWERS You take your kids to hospital to be told its a MYSTERY...HOW CAN YOU TRUST THE MEDICAL PROFFOSINALS YOUR JUST A NUMBER THEY DONT GIVE A STUFF

Anonymous said...

I'm a close friend of mrs locock so i have spent alot of time with her & her family, the unnecessary passing of GEMMA has hit the family extremely hard, & it saddens me that it could have easily been prevented. GEMMA was such a beautiful girl who had a wonderful loving family that will never be the same. GEMMA had more than one symptom of KAWASAKI DISEASE & it makes me so ANGRY that we can easily search these clearly visible symptoms on the internet and find out what she had but doctors who spend years studying cant seem to even do that. GEMMA is forever MISSED and LOVED, JB

Anonymous said...

My son has also had kawasaki disease when he was about 18 months old. We too took him to emergency department at John Hunter Hospital. We rushed to the ED department because my son was loosing conciousness and had a huge node in his neck. Whilst waiting for the doctors my son went limp in my arms and my mother screaming drew the attention of a doctor who scooped my son out of my arms with an exclaimation of "shit" and ran with him to another room. When I was allowed to enter there was about a dozen people around the bed working on him. I again had to leave the room while they performed a lumbar puncture thinking that he had some kind of meningitis. This came back negative and we were admitted to a ward. Sam had temperatures of 39.9 for eight days and was resuscitated on 4 occassions. This was a horrendous experience. After being resuscitated the fourth time they decided to to a heart scan and found a whole in his heart. A friend came to visit and asked what was wrong with Sam, and I reply was no one knows. She suggest kawasaki disease because her nephew had it 12 months prior and she thought he looked a lot like her nephew when he had it. She got literature of the internet and bought it to us in the hospital to show the doctors. The doctors were very interested saying that they had not heard of the disease. This was in 1997. Sam had many clinical symptons of the disease but the most common supposedly is peeling fingers and toes and he didn't have that. Sam was extremely sick with antibiotics being pumped into him through drips in both arms. He could not sit up or stand, he had a red round rash on his body, swollen liver and spleen, very high temperature, swollen tongue and lips. On the 9th day, fearing for the life of my son, I made a decision to stop all treatment of the several different antibiotics, because it seemed to me he was dying in front of my eyes. Treatment was stopped and they finally gave him asprin, which did bring his temperature down, after 8 days of anal paracetomal which did nothing to alleviate the temperature. Sam's condition had the dozens of doctors we saw stumped, and he was even booked in for bone marrow test as they were thinking luekemia. In the end it was a cardiologist who suggested to me that Sam had Kawasaki Disease. This diagnosis came about 6 weeks after being discharged from hospital. Sam spent 10 days in JHH. We are lucky that Sam did not get any heart anuerysm, and that a heart scan was perform because we then found out that he had a very large hole in his heart. His sickness was totally unrelated to his heart condition. Sam had open heart surgery about 18 months after Having kawasaki disease, and the surgery experience was relatively cruisey after what we had been through with KD.