A PATIENT who died of septicaemia at Tallaght Hospital the day after his transfer from a private hospital in Co Kildare had only a 20 per cent chance of survival on arrival in Tallaght’s intensive care unit (ICU), the Dublin County Coroner’s Court heard.
James Butler (60), of Meletta Park, Kildare town, had attended Clane Hospital for a routine prostate operation in August 2008.
Two days after the operation, his condition deteriorated and he was transferred to Tallaght’s ICU where he died the following day.
The postmortem found he had suffered multiorgan failure as a result of septicaemia.
Coroner Dr Kieran Geraghty returned a verdict of death by natural causes.
Consultant urologist Dr John Thornhill performed a transurethral resection of the prostate – a common procedure during which a section of an enlarged prostate is removed, usually because it is blocking urine flow – on Mr Butler at Clane Hospital on August 18th, 2008.
At about 7.30am on August 20th, a ward sister found that there had been an acute deterioration in Mr Butler’s condition.
She immediately contacted a consultant on call and an anaesthetist by phone.
An ambulance was contacted at 9.30am and, approximately two hours later, Mr Butler was transferred to Tallaght Hospital where a bed had been organised for him in the ICU.
Dr Judith Connolly, a consultant anaesthesiologist at Tallaght, yesterday told the coroner’s court that Mr Butler had been assessed as having a “high risk of not surviving” on admission: “There was an 80 per cent chance of mortality on arrival at the ICU.”
When asked by Dr Geraghty if Mr Butler would have had a better chance of survival if it had not taken four hours to bring him to Tallaght, she replied that it “wouldn’t have made much difference”.
The inquest heard that there is no intensive care facility at Clane Hospital and no doctors on duty at the facility overnight. If there is an acute emergency at the facility, nursing staff contact a local GP or a cardiac ambulance and there is always a consultant on call.
Dr Thornhill told the inquest that there was no delay in Mr Butler’s treatment and no delay in the transfer from Clane to Tallaght.
“If I had a patient in Tallaght that needed to get into the ICU it could take longer. Paradoxically, I have better access from Clane to the ICU,” he said.
He added that it would have been “highly inappropriate” to have an intensive care unit in Clane.
