The Inspectorate for Care and Care, Ivo, believes that a doctor at the Sahlgrenska hospital’s emergency department made a mistake when he sent home an elderly patient with heart disease who sought treatment for a nosebleed, reports the news agency Siren.
When the patient returned home, he was pale and tired and had severe diarrhea. An ambulance was called, but before leaving for the hospital the patient suffered a cardiac arrest from which he died during the ambulance journey.
Later, large amounts of blood were discovered in the patient’s stomach.
Ivo’s investigation shows that the blood continued to flow down into the stomach when the nosebleed was “stopped” with a tamponade at the hospital.
“Due to the fact that the nasal tamponade was more densely packed in the front part, fresh blood probably flowed backwards down to the throat and stomach, which led to the patient initially having stomach ache and diarrhea and finally too low blood volume with cardiac arrest as a result,” writes Ivo in the investigation.
“Management failure”
Ivo states that the doctor and the healthcare system failed in handling the patient. The authority believes, among other things, that the information given to the patient was insufficient in connection with him being discharged and sent home.
The authority also believes that the doctor should have informed about when the patient needed to seek care again, and which symptoms he should have been vigilant about.
Did not take important samples
In addition, important samples were not taken that could, among other things, demonstrate anemia.
“IVO believes that if the patient bled backwards, down to the throat and stomach, before he was discharged from the emergency department, checks of vital parameters could have indicated whether the patient was unstable and possibly caused him to be admitted for observation,” IVO writes in the investigation.
The patient had first sought treatment at the emergency room in Kungsbacka, which referred him to Sahlgrenska hospital.
The operations manager regrets what happened.