A DELAY in treating an 87-year-old man who had sustained a head injury after a fall did not impinge on his death, the Dublin City Coroner’s Court has found.
William Anderson, of Shanowen Road, Santry, Dublin, was admitted to the AE department of Beaumont Hospital on June 16th, 2009, following a fall at the Omni Park shopping centre in Santry.
A witness to the event who also knew the deceased, Christine Whelan, said she saw Mr Anderson collapse and fall as he made his way to the door of the shopping centre.
Mr Anderson was brought by ambulance to Beaumont Hospital, where he arrived at 5.24pm. He was called to see a doctor at 10.20pm and again at 10.40pm, but at this stage the patient could not be located. He was seen by a doctor at about 1.30am.
Dr Péadar Gilligan, a consultant in emergency medicine at Beaumont Hospital, gave evidence to the coroner’s court based on a review of Mr Anderson’s case.
He said the emergency department was particularly busy on June 16th when 168 people presented, of which 38 were deemed very serious cases which Dr Gilligan said represented “massive overcrowding in the emergency department”.
Dr Gilligan said while ideally the patient would have been seen within 10 minutes, due to staffing levels and overcrowding this was not achievable, adding that this timeframe was often unachievable.
Because Mr Anderson’s injuries involved bleeding inside the brain he was deemed unsuitable for surgical intervention. Dr Gilligan noted that, given that this was the case, even if a CT scan had been taken earlier, the outcome in this case would have been the same. Mr Anderson died eight days later in Beaumont on June 24th, 2009.
The Dublin city coroner, Brian Farrell, acknowledged that there had been a delay in medical consultation at the AE department. He added that if he thought the delay had seriously impinged on Mr Anderson’s death, he would return a verdict of misadventure, but the delay “doesn’t seem from a legal point of view to have altered the outcome”.
Although pathologist Olubunmi Ipadeola returned a death of bronchial pneumonia, the coroner found that the real cause of death was the fall, probably precipitated by a cardiac event causing a fracture of the skull and cerebral haemorrhage.
He recorded a verdict of accidental death due to a fall.