Posted on 11/20/2007 9:32:38 PM PST by Hildy
Actor Dennis Quaid's newborn twins have been admitted to a Los Angeles hospital's intensive care unit after they were accidentally given a drug overdose.
Quaid and his wife, Kimberly, welcomed Thomas Boone Quaid and Zoe Grace Quaid into the world on November 8, but the babies are now fighting for their lives at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Prayers for the babies and their parents.
how in God’s grace did this happen...nothing is worse.
Heparin comes in several concentrations. One is 10u per ml. That is usually used to flush lines. It also comes in 1000 an 10000u per ml concentrations. Grab the wrong vial and you have a disaster on your hands.
Why in God's name would newborn infants be on prescribed drugs, anyway?
that is exactly what happened......they were Rx’d 10 but got 10,000.....per the TMZ.com guy on fox news an hour or so ago....
Prayers for these babies and the family.
Perhaps some small sliver of good could come of this, and will help focus needed attention on the myriad mishaps in our nation’s hospitals, especially with regard to prescription medicine mistakes.
This happened on the show ER once...nurse just grabbed the wrong bottle. I guess it’s not that uncommon...what a horrible, horrible thing. But there are conflicting reports. I’ve heard the babies are in critical condition and I’ve heard they’re in stable condition. I hope we don’t wake up tomorrow to some really bad new.
That sounds like a Murphy’s Law situation. If there are really two different concentrations that are usually used in vastly different applications, they should be delivered in incompatible distribution containers, not in a container that can possibly be misused.
Full Statement from Cedars-Sinai
Posted Nov 20th 2007 10:26PM by TMZ Staff
Statement of Michael L. Langberg, MD Chief Medical Officer, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center:
On November 18, three patients who were receiving intravenous medications as part of their treatment had their IV catheters flushed with a solution containing a higher concentration of heparin (a medication used to keep IV catheters from clotting) than normal protocol. As a result of a preventable error, the patients’ IV catheters were flushed with heparin from vials containing a concentration of 10,000 units per milliliter instead of from vials containing a concentration of 10 units per milliliter.
more@
http://www.tmz.com/2007/11/20/full-statement-from-cedars-sinai/
This is tragic and brings to light the scary fact that thousands of people die each year from prescription errors.
I recall seeing it written somewhere as an odd statistic but can’t find it now.
This hits especially close to home in that I am the mother of twins. Dennis Quaid is a good man and I will pray for these precious babies.
What a tragedy! Why are newborns given these drugs?
OMG this story left me wondering why the babies were receiving heparin, but I didn’t think about line flushes. Poor things!
Not that it has anything to do with anything, but I noticed the twins were born to a surrogate mother.
Prayers sent!
This tragedy has happened before. Here is a link to a story from Sept. 2006 where 3 infants died from the exact same medication error.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14919072/
Hard to believe the package and labels have not been fixed to prevent this horrible thing from happening again.
For these little babies, and for the other patient, we beg for a miracle. May God help all those patients who were affected by this; for healing, for life we pray, Father. You hear our prayers - let us hear You when You answer us. In Jesus name we pray it...
they are premature, but the heparin is only to keep their IV’s from clotting/plugging......I don’t think the heparin was therapeutic at all.......
Pray very hard, one overdose was bad enough, but the twins got two of them. The only advantage infants have is they have strong regenerative capabilities so they will recover quickly, but my main concern is if you thin the blood too much, there can be brain damage. Nutrients and oxygen in the blood need time to migrate from blood to cell walls, if the blood is too thin, it rushes by too fast as the heart pumps it. Less nutrients but more important less oxygen can make it to the brain cells. This can be critical to infant brains which are constantly developing.
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