A tragic accident kills an Australian baby.. laughing gas instead of oxygen
A newborn Australian baby died within an hour of being mistakenly given laughing gas instead of oxygen.
The child, John Ghanem, received "nitrous oxide" due to an error in the installation of equipment in the hospital where he was born in western Sydney, according to the forensic report.
The investigation will last two weeks and will focus on the circumstances of John's death, including shortness of breath at birth and the installation and testing of gas tubes, "to try to reduce the chance of this happening again," Donna Ward, the inquest attorney, told The Independent.
John was placed in the neonatal recovery room when doctors noticed that a loose part of his umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck and he was not breathing properly.
One of the doctors tried to "stimulate John by rubbing it with a cloth" before using an infant resuscitation device to push air into his body parts, according to "Russia Today", which quoted the report.
The doctor attempted to resuscitate John using 50% oxygen, then 100% oxygen, from a wall-mounted medical gas panel in the eighth operating room.
The infant's condition did not improve and CPR was started, but his response to resuscitation was unexpected, and he was pronounced dead.
The hospital director made a "high priority request" for a gas panel check in the operating room, but it wasn't carried out until another six days later, according to a report from the investigation in the Sydney Morning Herald.
To then discover the fatal mistake that killed the newborn.
Follow our latest local and sports news and the latest political and economic developments via Google news
:
laughing gas,
new born,
Australia