A consultant at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda has told an inquest that a young woman may have lived if medical staff at the hospital had recognised she had a serious head injury and treated her immediately.
Dublin City Coroner's Court heard yesterday that Claire O'Reilly (24), Pallas Tynagh, Co Galway, was taken to the hospital after she fell and hit her head on a concrete floor in her boyfriend's house in Ashbourne on November 22nd, 2004. But when admitted, first-year senior house officer Dr Suraiya Hamid believed her unconscious state was alcohol induced.
She told the court yesterday she did not believe Ms O'Reilly's injuries were serious and did not contact the on-call medical registrar to organise a brain scan until five hours after she was admitted and a swelling appeared on her forehead. "The call from the ambulance said this was an alcohol-induced injury," she said.
Conor Egleston, consultant in emergency medicine at the hospital, told the court it was "difficult to say" but possible that Ms O'Reilly might have survived had medical staff treated her immediately. "But she would have had some severe brain damage as a result of the injury. That doesn't take away from the fact that we would have liked to have had the CT scan earlier."
Mr Egleston said he investigated the incident and "was concerned by the length of time before the CT scan".
He was also on-call that night and "was concerned I wasn't called".
A CT scan revealed a serious head injury and Ms O'Reilly was transferred to the national neurosurgery centre at Beaumont hospital in Dublin. Despite surgery, she died five days later from a brain fracture and haemorrhage.
Coroner Dr Brian Farrell recorded a verdict of death by misadventure and said "an earlier diagnosis" of the head injury "would have been desirable".
Chris Logan went by ambulance to the hospital with Ms O'Reilly and said he tried to explain to staff that his girlfriend was not unconscious from alcohol consumption but from the fall. But the doctor "shook her head" and concluded "she was suffering from alcohol abuse".
"In my opinion, she didn't have that much to drink and we had a big meal," he said.
Mr Logan told the court they had a three-course meal in Drogheda with another couple and shared a bottle of wine. They then went to a nearby pub where Ms O'Reilly had about six bottles of beer. When the four returned to Mr Logan's house, they watched a DVD before Claire decided to go to bed.
"After about half an hour she said she was tired and was going up to bed. She asked me not to be long. Then I heard a thud in the hall. I went out and she was lying in the hall at the bottom of the stairs, out cold."
Richard Purdy, who had been out socialising with the couple, told the court yesterday that Ms O'Reilly was not intoxicated when she left to go to bed.