Died of sepsis because atypical presentation not recognized
ASPartOfMe
Veteran
Joined: 25 Aug 2013
Age: 67
Gender: Male
Posts: 35,535
Location: Long Island, New York
13 Sep 2024, 11:40 am
The parents of a four-year-old boy who died from sepsis in hospital after staff missed a key chance to save his life are campaigning for better care in his name. Lindita Alushi, 44, and Kastriot Klosi, 50, took Daniel Klosi to the Royal Free Hospital in London four times in the week before his death in 2023.
But the family was sent home on three occasions - allegedly with instructions to give Daniel the medicine Calpol. It was only on the fourth visit to A&E that doctors admitted him to the children's emergency department. Tragically, by this point he had deteriorated rapidly - and died a few hours later in the early hours of April 2 last year.
During the inquest into the death, which concluded last month, coroner Mary Elizabeth Hassell said Daniel, who had autism, came in with an "atypical" presentation of sepsis and there was a "lack of recognition" of how to view the needs of a neurodivergent child.
Now, on World Sepsis Day (September 13), Daniel's parents are campaigning for greater awareness on how to care for neurodivergent children with the life-threatening condition. They hope to introduce 'Daniel's Rule' in their son's memory.
In a narrative conclusion, Ms Hassell said the doctor who assessed Daniel on his third visit to hospital failed to read his medical records and failed to elicit a full parental history. She added: "Crucially, this meant that the consultant failed to appreciate that Daniel’s current illness had been ongoing for a week.
"As a consequence, she failed to order blood tests. These would have demonstrated a very elevated C-reactive protein. Intravenous antibiotics would then have been administered. Daniel’s life would have been saved."
Dr Ron Daniels, founder and joint CEO of the charity UK Sepsis Trust, said: “Because sepsis can arise as a complication of any infection in people of any age, it can be difficult for health professionals to spot. However, years on from the tragic death of William Mead to sepsis in 2014, it is unacceptable that lives are still being lost in cases like Daniel’s, where his parents presented to healthcare multiple times.
“It is crucial that healthcare professionals recognise that for every patient - but particularly those who are neurodivergent or have a learning disability - the parents or carers know how sick their loved one is better than the doctor or nurse. Our professions need to get much better at listening to parents like Lindita and Kastriot to prevent future avoidable tragedies."
A Royal Free London spokesperson said: "We are deeply sorry that Daniel died while under our care and would like to share our heartfelt condolences with his family and loved ones. Following a thorough investigation, we identified a number of areas for improvement, and measures were taken to immediately address these.
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Professionally Identified and joined WP August 26, 2013
DSM 5: Autism Spectrum Disorder, DSM IV: Aspergers Moderate Severity
“My autism is not a superpower. It also isn’t some kind of god-forsaken, endless fountain of suffering inflicted on my family. It’s just part of who I am as a person”. - Sara Luterman
15 Sep 2024, 11:01 am
A problem for me when I seek help from medical professionals is that they read me wrong. On different occasions I have contacted them with things like sepsis, sinusitis or a ruptured eardrum and described my symtoms without being taken seriously. A typical response have been: You say you have a lot of pain but you don't sound/look like that. You wouldn't be this calm if that were the case. If it's over the phone they tell me to try to calm down(!) and contact them in a couple of days if it gets worse. If I am there in person hopefully it can get sorted out when I insist on a physical examination. I find this problem with communication rather dangerous.
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English is not my first language.
15 Sep 2024, 11:16 am
I read the article at the link, but I feel like I've missed some things. What were the symptoms that were abnormal or brushed off? I don't see a comparison between a standard presentation & this person's presentation. I also noticed that it said the staff hadn't really looked at the history to see how long it'd been ongoing, but why didn't the parents explicitly give that information at every visit instead of assuming it'd been read? If it's an ER, it's much faster to mention things over & over to the different staff than assume they've all read everything.
27 Sep 2024, 1:50 am
A small amount of good news from the UK: the NHS is introducing mandatory autism awareness training for medical professionals, named after Oliver McGowan, a young man who died because his autistic behaviours were misinterpreted as psychosis.
It's only a regional initiative at the moment, but hopefully it will grow.
https://www.hee.nhs.uk/our-work/learnin ... ity-autism
27 Sep 2024, 2:47 am
being very sceptic about the nd-conclusion
dr-s are increasingly, imho, of the narcissistic values schools, or social norm judges species
a 'place of measuring one's word-ly empathy' against the unsuspecting 'client'
they can't hear because they are 'the experts'
and they always cover up for each other
maybe all that was always,
- very likely
but people compartimentalize, because i'm this or that,
and here, no disclosure of the atypical presentation, or any,
no no business as usual; people-talk
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7148498/
Abstract
In an era of proliferating multidrug resistant bacterial infections that are exhausting the capacity of existing chemical antibiotics and in which the development of new antibiotics is significantly rarer, Western medicine must seek additional therapeutic options that can be employed to treat these infections. Among the potential antibacterial solutions are bacteriophage therapeutics, which possess very different properties from broad spectrum antibiotics that are currently the standard of care, and which can be used in combination with them and often provide synergies. In this review we summarize the state of the development of bacteriophage therapeutics and discuss potential paths to the implementation of phage therapies in contemporary medicine, focused on fixed phage cocktail therapeutics since these are likely to be the first bacteriophage products licensed for broad use in Western countries.
##but lets fixate on diversity-treatement snakeoil business
