Woman dies after having too much caffeine
A woman died at only 32 years old after consuming too much caffeine.
According to multiple local outlets like 9News and News.com.au, an inquest has heard that Christina Lackmann, 32, died alone in her apartment's bathroom in April 2021 in Australia.
She called an emergency number as she couldn't get off the floor and was feeling dizzy, light-headed, and numb.
But it took the ambulance seven hours to arrive after her call.
The coroner's report, dated April 22, 2021, and published on June 2, 2025, stated that she called 000 from her mobile phone at 7:49 p.m.
Her case was deemed non-acute or non-urgent, making it suitable for a secondary clinical triage. But a transfer call to a health practitioner failed as all referral services were busy at the time. Nevertheless, Lackmann was told to keep her line open so she could be called back.
During the call, she didn't disclose that she had taken caffeine tablets or what had caused her symptoms, according to 9News.
An ambulance staff tried to call her 14 times, starting at 8:17 p.m., but to no avail. They even sent her a text message.
An hour later, her call priority was upgraded in a bid to improve her chances of getting an ambulance dispatched but two ambulances assigned to her were moved to cases with higher priority between 9:14 p.m. and 1:46 a.m.
Finally, at 2:05 a.m., an ambulance was dispatched from 9.5 kilometers away and reached Lackmann's residence at 2:23 a.m.
But it was already too late. She was found bluish and "very cold to the touch."
No resuscitation was attempted as medical staff assessed that she had been dead "for a prolonged period." She was formally pronounced dead at 3 a.m.
Police found no suspicious circumstances, according to the coroner's report.
Autopsy, meanwhile, showed that there was a "very high and potentially fatal concentration" of caffeine in her blood samples, at about 290 milligrams per liter. Her stomach contents had a caffeine concentration of 940 mg/L.
For comparison, the coroner noted that a 350 mL cola drink has 18 to 48 mg of caffeine, while a regular 180 mL coffee or tea has 40 to 150 mg.
Lackmann's medical cause of death was caffeine toxicity, according to the report.
Dr. Dimitri Gerostamoulos, chief toxicologist of the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine, gave expert evidence and said the concentration of caffeine detected in Lackmann's blood couldn't be achieved by simply drinking excessive amounts of coffee. Though the amount of caffeine she had consumed couldn't be estimated, it was "consistent with excessive consumption of caffeine, equivalent to at least 10 x 100 mg caffeine tablets."
Associate Professor Narendra Gunja, a specialist medical practitioner in clinical and forensic toxicology and emergency medicine, also provided expert opinion in the coroner's report, noting that though the dose of caffeine required to cause toxicity varies per individual, the majority of patients with caffeine levels above 80 mg/L "would be expected to display signs of severe to life-threatening toxicity."
Gunja noted that death via caffeine overdose is rare "if the patient presents to hospital and is treated with intensive life-saving therapy."
The doctors agreed that the caffeine in Lackmann's blood "far exceeded therapeutic levels or those found in recreational coffee drinkers and was consistent with caffeine toxicity and excessive caffeine intake."
For Gunja, Lackmann would've survived if she had been in the hospital immediately after making the 000 call, since "it is likely she would have received early medical attention with questioning about any drug ingestion."
But without knowing the time she ingested the caffeine, or the length of time between ingestion and the making of the 000 call, Gunja couldn't determine the exact time at which her death was still preventable.