The preliminary report of the internal committee constituted by the Director of Medical Education (DME), to look into the death of a patient post-surgery in the Medical College Hospital, allegedly following the transfusion of an incompatible blood group, has reported that there is no prima facie evidence to suggest that the death had been caused by a error in blood transfusion.
The report, submitted by two faculty members of the departments of General Medicine and Pathology to the DME, said that the patient did not appear to have been transfused with an incompatible blood group and that the death seemed to be the aftermath of the post-operative complications he had developed.
Relatives’ allegation
The death of Sreekumar, 48, who had been in the cardiothoracic ICU following a coronary artery bypass graft on Tuesday, had led to much commotion at the MCH, after the patient’s relatives alleged that he had developed complications after he was transfused an incompatible blood group earlier.
Doctors who had attended the patient had clarified that the platelet bag brought from the blood bank had been sent back after detecting that there was an error in the IP number on the bag and that it was never administered to the patient.
The preliminary report says that the said bag of platelets – containing 100 ml of platelets in a 320 ml blood bag – had been kept aside in the blood bank and that it contained the same amount of platelets as had been in the original pack – indicating that it was not transfused in the patient.
The committee has however suggested that the cause of the death of the patient can be pin-pointed only if a detailed investigation is carried out by a high-level expert committee, consisting of all the doctors who had treated the patient
Further details regarding the cause of death would be available only after the histo-pathology report following the post-mortem examination, is released, the DME said.
