Otitis is an infection of the outer ear (ear canal) and middle ear (last the eardrum). This disease is now very well treated with antibiotics. So how did a young 19-year-old student die from this mild illness?
Two emergency visits
Leana, a 19-year-old Nicaraguan student had been studying literature for 6 months at the University of Lyon II. Suffering from severe ear pain, she went to the emergency room of the Édouard Herriot Hospital in Lyon for the first time on February 9. Doctors find nothing serious, prescribe antibiotics and painkillers and send her home, reveals Le Progrès.fr.
As the pains become unbearable and the young girl vomits repeatedly, her friends take her to the emergency room for a second time on February 12. After half an hour, a nurse comes to see her and the “sort 4” class, which does not give her priority. She will wait 8 hours before seeing a doctor. Again, the latter did not observe anything to worry about, prescribed another antibiotic treatment and sent her home again.
On February 21, Leana was transported in a coma to the Edouard-Henriot hospital in Lyon. She died there two days later of a brain abscess that had caused intracranial hypertension. It is a rare but not unusual complication.
Was there a medical error?
Doctors at the hospital told Le Progrès.fr that “her temperature was normal and that she did not vomit during her visits to the emergency room”. Neurological examination and blood pressure were also normal.
Leana’s mother claims, however, that her daughter suffered from all the symptoms indicating a complication of otitis: headache, vomiting, fever, discharge from the ear. She denounces “a medical error” and filed a complaint against the hospital for “manslaughter”. These words are confirmed by Leana’s friends who accompanied her to the emergency room.
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