Monumental measures were engaged to save patient’s life – Gynaecologist

Jan 12, 2018 News

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“I have lots of regrets about not being able to save her, but there is nothing more that we could have done.”
These were the sobering words of Gynaecologist and Medical Director of the Dr. Balwant Singh Hospital, Dr. Madhu Singh, during an interview with this publication yesterday.
Her sombre remarks comes on the heels of the passing of one of her patients, 37-year-old Stacy Peters, a resident of 1296 Central Amelia’s Ward, Linden.
Peters was pronounced dead at approximately 05:38hrs on Wednesday at the hospital, but according to Dr. Singh, it certainly was not because of a lack of meticulous care and a swift team response when the patient developed complications.
Peters had one day earlier become a mother of three after she gave birth to a baby girl at the very hospital.
But according to Dr. Singh, deliberate care and attention was given to the patient throughout her pregnancy since she was listed as high risk and was counselled as such. The Gynaecologist said that not only was the patient a sickler [suffering from sickle cell anaemia] but she also had a reoccurrence of multiple large fibroids, and thus had previous myomectomy [a surgical procedure to remove uterine fibroids].
Because of past issues, Dr. Singh said that she had communicated to the patient the possibility of even having to remove her womb during surgery. “This was because of the previous myomectomy and she had huge fibroids again. Whenever a patient with such big fibroids has a caesarean we may end up having to remove the womb in order to stop bleeding,” the experienced Gynaecologist shared.
For this reason, she said that keen attention was given to the patient throughout her caesarean section. The surgical procedure was uneventful and, according to Dr. Singh, “we were happy with her condition post-surgery.”
The woman appeared to be recovering well and showed no adverse signs. What the medical experts who were attending to the woman were not aware of was that a clot had developed. Speaking to this state of affairs, Dr. Singh explained, “a clot like this can happen in any surgery, especially pelvic surgery like a caesarean or any other gynaecological surgery. Women who are pregnant and women who have just had a baby are at high risk for developing clots…it is called deep vein thrombosis.”
When a clot develops, Dr. Singh revealed that it can always detach at anytime and become lodged in important parts of the body such as the heart, lungs or the brain, in which case it becomes a thromboembolism [blockage in a blood vessel].
In the case of Peters, a huge clot became detached from one of her veins and went to the heart and became lodged in the pulmonary artery.
A post mortem examination was conducted yesterday.
According to Dr. Singh, such conditions are so rare that they present three in every 1000 patients.
Dr. Singh disclosed that the clot was, moreover, not detected before the woman was operated on. She however noted that there was no hesitation on the part of medical experts at the hospital to respond to the complications the woman developed. In fact, Dr. Singh divulged that the response was within minutes.
Peters’ complications reportedly all started with her complaining of feeling dizzy. This led to the ER doctor being summoned. Recognising that the patient was in a crisis, the ER doctor in turn called in Dr. Singh, the attending gynaecologist, who also requested the presence of other specialists.
“We had a cardiologist coming out at 5 o clock in the morning, there is no other hospital that offers that kind of facility, I can tell you that, and that is because we have a full-time cardiologist always on call,” said Dr. Singh.
It was within minutes of the cardiologist’s arrival that Peters’ condition was diagnosed and immediate moves were made to take her into the Cath Lab to suction the clot.
“These are usually post mortem diagnosis…when the patient is dead, a lot of times the cause is known, but we were able to make the diagnosis before but we still couldn’t save her,” confessed Dr. Singh.
She continued, “We did everything that would have been done in any international centre, but this patient had such a massive clot that she couldn’t be saved.”
Even as she stressed that there was no negligence or wanting care by experts at the hospital, Dr. Singh asserted that “even in the most advanced countries some deaths do occur. We did our best to save this patient and we did what any advanced centre could have done, including providing emergency Cath Lab facilities.”
Dr. Singh noted that while the progression of Peters’ condition was detailed to her husband, other relatives who were not even present at the hospital, opted to share a controversial version of the situation with another section of the media.
“They are saying how we left a clot in the patient; we didn’t leave a clot inside her. I can’t go and leave a clot in a patient’s blood vessel. I don’t think that they understood what we were explaining, but we did explain everything to the husband and he seemed to understand,” said Dr. Singh.
The hospital has also refuted reports that demands were made the family to pay off the hospital bill before Peters’ baby could be released into their care. In fact what was done, the hospital said in a statement, was that “an offer was made for our Paediatric nurses to care for the baby while the father was making arrangements for the baby’s care. At no time was it said that the bill must be paid off before the baby can leave the hospital.”
“Further to this, it was also stated to the father that the baby must complete a 24-hour observation period before being discharged from the hospital,” the hospital statement added.
It was also amplified in the statement that “the hospital did everything humanly possible to try to save the life of this patient.”

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