Posted on 11/20/2007 2:55:08 PM PST by 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!
(Excerpt) Read more at tmz.com ...
It's creepy that some of these types have jobs in hospitals and nursing homes and have access to the locked pharmacutical cabinets and closets.
An ok nurse would never inject doses like this. Something foul is afoot here.
Leni
the vials normally contain 5000 units....I’ll bet that the pharmacy sent up the wrong dose already drawn up in a syringe....but that doesn’t erase not checking the label before you give a medicine....( maybe it was even labeled wrong....)
“Staying the hell as far away from hospitals and doctors as they could”.
Extremely good advice for a long life!
Probably wrong concentration of Heparin.
mostly though, that study IIRC categorizes any bad effect from a medicine as a "mistake" when in actuality,every single medicine has untoward effects or adverse reactions, even when the med is doing what it is supposed to do....
surgery on the wrong body part...wrong drug given....wrong treatment....those are mistakes...
but giving a treatment or a med or doing an operation to save someones life knowing that the adverse reactions could be fatal....that is NOT a mistake....
do you fall for the "man caused global warming " bit as well, without reading between the lines and doing your own critical analysis of the data?
“In Hospital Deaths from Medical Errors at 195,000 per Year USA”
My grandfather was right. If you want to live a long life, stay out of hospitals and away from doctors. He ate steak and eggs every morning and almost made it to 90.
So what are you saying... that we should go to somebody other than doctors for medical procedures?
Who do you go to?
We're told a technician stored the Heparin in the wrong place, and when a nurse grabbed the medicine for the babies without looking -- it was the wrong dosage.
A source says the babies are now being given Protamine, which reverses the effects of Heparin.
UPDATE: We're told as many as thirteen patients at Cedars were mistakenly given the overdose of Heparin, but the effects are more critical because of the age and weight of the twins.
Frightening. Prayers up for those little ones.
How does someone make such a huge mistake? I wonder how big the lawsuit will be?
Lord watch over these two angels.
Prayers on the way.
The operative word is competent. And yes, a cmpetent nurse would know the difference. However, apparently, in this case, someone had their head up their a$$.
depends on the dilution. The stock stuff we have is 5000 units/ml. It is diluted for the specific purpose. These people either used way too much or diluted for the wrong application, or simply were not thinking what they were doing.
It was probably sloppy-ass handwriting from a nurse or doctor. Either that, if it was a computer-printed label, it was either incorrect dosage or the person read it wrong.
“Giving 10 cc instead of .1 cc”
A couple of decades ago and after a test in a “plant cell culture”
class, I heard a fellow grad student trying to get some “mercy”
on one test question.
I will always remember the professors blunt response:
“You calculated the concentration of that hormone at 10 times the
correct level. If you had been dealing with a human being and a drug
you’d probably have KILLED the patient!”
Those d-arned decimal places REALLY do matter!
Yes, 3 babies died in an incident involving the same exact overdose last year. 6 babies received the wrong dosage.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-09-20-baby-deaths_x.htm
How hard is this? After the first incident, why didn’t the mfgr create new packaging—color coded, different shaped boxes? Slap a picture of the Gerber baby on the infant package fercripes sake....something, anything.
I find the 195,000-per-year number unbelievable.
There are a total of about 2.4 million deaths each year, 195,000 is almost 10%. I can’t believe that almost 10% of the total deaths each year are due to hospital accidents.
According to other statistics, the total number of deaths each year from complications of medical procedures is 3059.
If only 3000 people die from “complications of medical/surgical procedures”, how could 200 times that many be dying by accident in hospitals? Wouldn’t they all be counted as complications?
The total number of accidental deaths is 95,000. So if there are 195,000 hospital error deaths, someone isn’t counting them as accidents.
I find it hard to believe that an average of 4000 people per year per state are dying because of medical errors in hospitals and it isn’t front-page news every day in every state. That’s 10 people a day per state.
the nurse didn’t give the wrong amount. she gave the right amount of the wrong concentation. I am a nurse and the responsibility lies on her shoulders. You ALWAYS double check your med dosages. I worked pediatrics for 25 years. Meds meds are calculated by weight so you unlike adults dosages are different for evry patient. Except for flushing Hep Locks. Those are Unit doses, BUT you STILL ALWAYS check the lable, it doesn’t matter what bin you got it out of!!!Only ONE head should roll and that is the nurses.
I know you’re a nurse, so don’t get me wrong as they do a terrific job — Mr. Peel was hospitalized last year — but that kind of nurse that makes such an awful mistake gives the rest of the profession a bad name. IMHO she should be be given the boot.
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