Lawsuit alleges woman’s death caused by overdose of antidote at Manitoba hospital

Posted on September 10, 2024 by Peggy

The family of a 20-year-old Manitoba woman who went to hospital in 2022 after taking too much of a common pain reliever, and died days later after being given too much of the antidote by the staff who treated her, is now suing the hospital, the health authority and the doctors and nurses involved, a court filing says.

A statement of claim filed on Sept. 4 by the woman’s family, who live in Keeshkeemaquah, Man., alleges the woman died after being improperly treated by medical staff at the hospital in nearby Portage la Prairie, a city about 80 kilometres west of Winnipeg.

She went to that hospital on Oct. 1, 2022, with symptoms including nausea and abdominal pain and was found to have an elevated level of acetaminophen in her system — 84 mg/L — after taking what the lawsuit said was “an unknown amount” of the drug in the previous 24 to 48 hours.

Acetaminophen is found in Tylenol and more than 400 over-the-counter products in Canada, including combination cold and cough medicines and nighttime products, such as NyQuil and Sinutab.

The woman was prescribed a loading dose of 60 mg/kg per hour of an antidote for an acetaminophen overdose for the first four hours of treatment, then a maintenance dose of 6 mg/kg per hour for the following 16 hours, the lawsuit said.

The woman’s symptoms initially improved and the amount of acetaminophen in her system dropped. But the dose of the antidote she was being given was ordered to be increased to 100 mg/kg per hour until midnight after her care was handed over to another doctor.

As a result, the woman was given 66 grams of the antidote over a 12-hour period — which the statement of claim said was “an approximately 16-fold excess” from the four grams she should have received.

Her care was then handed over to another doctor before she started getting “increasingly confused, agitated, paranoid, and disoriented” on the morning of Oct. 3, the lawsuit said. She needed restraint and was given lorazepam and midazolam to calm her down, and her dosing of the antidote was adjusted to 6 mg/kg per hour.

A lab report done around the same time showed her liver function tests had worsened, and a head CT scan on the same day showed fluid on her brain, the lawsuit said.

After consulting with poison control, one of the doctors who had been treating the woman learned the woman “had been significantly overdosed” on the antidote she was being given “due to an incorrect dosing on Oct. 2,” according to the statement of claim. The woman then stopped being given that medicine at the recommendation of the poison control doctor.

Her condition continued to worsen despite being treated for the fluid on her brain, and the woman was transferred to Winnipeg’s Health Sciences Centre for care and management on the afternoon of Oct. 3, the lawsuit said.

On Oct. 5, she was pronounced brain dead. The next day, she died from her injuries.

The lawsuit alleges the woman’s death was caused by the improper dosing she was given and the delay in addressing it. An autopsy showed the amount of acetaminophen in the woman’s system was not enough to have killed her, the lawsuit said, and she had no other underlying health conditions that would have caused her death.

The court filing also alleges the doctors and nurses involved, and the hospital and Southern Health — the health authority responsible for the facility — all breached their duty of care to the woman as a patient by failing to recognize she was getting the wrong dosage or failing to identify her symptoms as being from overdose.

CBC News has requested comment from Southern Health.

The court filing seeks damages that include the loss of the woman’s guidance, care and companionship, and extra costs including funeral expenses.