Call for probe after girl, 4, suffers cardiac arrest
A father has called for an independent investigation after accusing hospital staff of forcefully pressing his four-yearold daughter’s face down while performing stitches for a head wound that left her in a cardiac arrest.
Lai Sum-yuet was found unconscious with her heart stopped after receiving three stitches in a three-minute procedure at Yan Chai Hospital in Tsuen Wan on May 25. -She is in a critical condition with brain damage and has to rely on ventilation and life support in the paediatric intensive care unit at Princess Margaret Hospital in Kwai Chung.
Meeting the press a day before Father’s Day, her father, who only gave his name as Lai, accused medical staff of pressing Sumyuet downwards on a pillow during the procedure which caused suffocation.
“Just like that, they have destroyed my beautiful family. It feels like my heart has been stabbed with a knife and bleeds every day,” he said yesterday.
Lai and lawmaker Joephy Chan Wing-yan urged the Hospital Authority and Yan Chai Hospital to set up a committee consisting of experts and specialists from other hospitals to look into what caused the girl’s heart to stop and the asphyxiation.
The father, who was accompanying his daughter during the procedure, said her head was facing the right side at first, but as she kept struggling, a medical staff used two hands to press her face down and forcefully secured her head.
“My daughter had been struggling for quite some time as her face was pushed downward. After the first stitch, the assistant said the child behaved herself better,” he said.
“I thought she did not make any sound because she had got used to the pain. But I did not realise something was wrong nor did the two medical staff.”
He said when the staff turned her over, her eyes had rolled back, her tongue was stuck out and her limbs had turned purple.
But the Hospital Authority earlier said the girl underwent wound suturing “in a prone position with her head facing right”.
The incident occurred on May 25 as the girl was brought to the Tsuen Wan public hospital after sustaining a 2cm cut at the back of her head from a fall at home.
Speaking to the press four days later, the hospital said the girl was “struggling and crying” at 11.28pm after the first stitch, then a patient care assistant used her hands to “stabilise her head”. She finished receiving three stitches at 11.31pm.
But the assistant and a nurse later discovered the girl had lost consciousness and her heart had stopped, performing first aid on her immediately. Her heart started beating again at 11.49pm.
With no abnormalities in her lungs and brain X-rays, she was diagnosed with brain damage caused by a lack of oxygen and reduced blood flow.
Police launched an investigation into the case on June 1 after receiving a report from her father.
In a reply to the Post, a spokesman for the group of hospitals in West Kowloon said it was “saddened” and “very concerned” by the incident and “understood the feelings of the family”. “[We]will follow up on the case with full efforts and provide all possible assistance to the family,” he said, pledging a review of procedures.