Dennis Quaid's Twins in Medical Nightmare

www.TMZ.com ^ | TMZ

[passionfruit]

TMZ has learned that Dennis Quaid's newborn twins are fighting for their lives after being inadvertently overdosed at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.

Sources tell us the twins -- Thomas Boone and Zoe Grace -- were accidentally given a massive dose of Heparin, an anti-coagulant. Babies typically get 10 units. Our sources say they were each mistakenly given 10,000 units. The drug is used to flush out IV lines and prevent blood clots. We're told one dose was given on Sunday morning, another on Sunday evening.

We're told late Sunday night, both babies started to "bleed out." Both babies are now at Cedars in the neo-natal intensive care unit where we're told they are stable. Snip!

[passionfruit]

I remember several newborns dying a year or two ago when a hospital pharmace stocked adult heparin on the pediatric heparin shelf. Nobody caught the error then, looks like the problem or something like it has occurred here.

[Petronski]

Babies typically get 10 units. Our sources say they were each mistakenly given 10,000 units.

What a horrible mistake.

[rineaux]

My prayers are with him, family and the lil twins.

[Red Badger]

OMG!......How does THAT kind of mistake happen?............

[Ramius]

Wow. Horrible mistake indeed.

Does anybody know if this sort of thing is survivable or has any long term effects?

[Tax-chick]

Oh, I’m so sorry to hear this. Prayers for the poor little babies!

(I hadn’t realized Dennis Quaid was expecting, bless his heart.)

[going hot]

Giving 10 cc instead of .1 cc

[HiTech RedNeck]

like, nobody bothers to actually read the label.

[doug from upland]

Prayers for the babies and family.

[Theresawithanh]

Terrible news! Prayers for the Quaid family. I can’t imagine how they must feel.

[Ramius]

How does THAT kind of mistake happen?

A typo... a miscommunication... a mislabeled container... lots of ways I suppose. Sometimes the worst of things can be caused by the tiniest of errors.

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

This is all rather strange. The twins were born by way of a ‘gestational carrier’, that is a surrogate mother, a couple of days earlier. Quaid is 53, this will probably hit him hard (and he will hit the hospital harder).

[airborne]

We're told one dose was given on Sunday morning, another on Sunday evening.

Both of them were given the same overdose treatment a half a day apart?

And it wasn't caught on the first child? WTF??

[Vaquero]

I use to work in a pharmaceutical lab where we would take almost solid cryoprecipitate (the clotting factor also known as factor 8) , around 8 KGs of it at a time, harvested from human plasma and dissolve it in a pig heparin solution. it worked fast and would dissolve the stuff right back into a liquid.

My best wishes for these children and the family.

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

Giving 10 cc instead of .1 cc

I believe that is giving 10 cc instead of .01 cc

[Petronski]

Probably a matter of “10 units” v. “10k units” . . . one character different.

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

Or is that giving 100 cc instead of .1 cc.

[Diplomat]

Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles is one of the top medical facilities on this planet. World renown for their heart center, amongst other specialties. If it can happen there, it can happen anywhere.

Not that it matters, but these twins were born via a surrogate mother over a week ago. Prayers for all, this is an awful tragedy.

[Red Badger]

Would not a competent nurse or LPN know that 10 cc is waaaay too much?............

[maine-iac7]

OMG!......How does THAT kind of mistake happen?............

Ahmmm , because the news doesn't report it much and when it does, the sheeple pay little to no attention.

Neither does Washington -

"In Hospital Deaths from Medical Errors at 195,000 per Year USA"

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/11856.php

195,000 a year! (and there are reports that give much higher numbers - but go with 195,000 x 5 years we've been at war = 975,000 dead due to medical errors...

The silence is deafening...from the media, from Washington and from We the Sheeple....

It's nothing new - but everyone is tone deaf