Woman dies during heart surgery after 10-minute power outage at hospital
A woman died in the middle of her heart surgery after the hospital experienced a power outage that lasted for about 10 minutes.
The UK's judiciary released its Prevention of Future Death report on Aug. 13, sharing more information on the death of Jean Dye, 77, who passed away during her heart procedure at Scunthorpe General Hospital in England for an underlying cardiac disease.
Detailing the incident, senior coroner Paul Smith said that Dye was undergoing a Percutaneous Coronary Intervention, also known as coronary angioplasty, to treat underlying cardiac disease on Sept. 11, 2020. Per the Mayo Clinic, it is a minimally invasive procedure that opens blocked coronary arteries using a small, permanent tube (or stent).
He noted that the doctors had a limited window to set up the cardiac stent, but an unexpected power outage occurred within the room for approximately 10 minutes. They haven't established the cause of the power outage to this day.
"The loss of electrical power removed the ability to provide X-ray images and consequently prevented commencement of the stenting procedure until power was regained. Although the stenting was then completed, Mrs. Dye failed to recover and her death was confirmed," Smith wrote.
"On balance of probabilities, Mrs. Dye would have survived but for the loss of electrical power," he added.
Per Smith, the loss of power arose as a result of the Emergency Power Off (EPO) circuit activating. "It overrode the emergency power back up system. The reason for that activation was unclear although a physical activation of any of the three EPO buttons was excluded on the evidence," he explained.
“Had staff been aware of the exact cause of the loss of power on this occasion and had they had the opportunity to reset the circuit without the need to await the arrival of an engineer, who in turn had to attend a separate plant room, the downtime would likely have been significantly reduced,” Smith continued.
“While it was not possible to say that the additional time spent on this occasion made a difference between the patient surviving or not, there may well be future cases within which such fine margins are time critical," he added.
Smith has sent the report to the concerned health agencies, and gave them until Aug. 28 to respond.
