A child who died in a Texas hospital after developing pneumonia following a measles infection died as a result of \u201cmedical error\u201d \u2014 including failure to administer the correct antibiotic in time, according to doctors who reviewed the child\u2019s medical records, shared with Children\u2019s Health Defense by the family.<\/p>\n
A child who died in a Texas hospital after developing pneumonia following a measles infection died as a result of \u201cmedical error\u201d \u2014 including failure to administer the correct antibiotic in time, according to a medical expert who reviewed the child\u2019s medical records.<\/p>\n Children\u2019s Health Defense (CHD) obtained the medical records from the\u00a0family of the 6-year-old girl<\/a>. The parents said they wanted people to know what happened to their daughter so it wouldn\u2019t happen to other children.<\/p>\n The parents obtained the records from Covenant Children\u2019s Hospital in Lubbock where their\u00a0child died on Feb. 26<\/a>.<\/p>\n The parents told\u00a0Dr. Ben Edwards<\/a>, who successfully treated their other children for measles, that they didn\u2019t want to use the information uncovered in the medical records to inflame the situation. However, they did want to get the word out about the mistake if it could prevent it from happening to other children.<\/p>\n Dr. Pierre Kory<\/a>, who has extensive experience in\u00a0pulmonary and critical care<\/a>\u00a0medicine, analyzed the records. He said today in an\u00a0interview on CHD.TV<\/a>, \u201cI\u2019ve done medical case reviews from malpractice lawyers for a good part of my career, and this case was tragic.\u201d<\/p>\n According to Kory\u2019s analysis of the records, the girl died from a secondary bacterial pneumonia that had \u201clittle to do with\u00a0measles<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n He added, \u201cWhen I say it has little to do with measles, secondary bacterial pneumonias can happen after any viral infection.\u201d<\/p>\n Kory said the girl \u201cdied of a medical error \u2014 and that error was a completely inappropriate antibiotic\u201d for treating the kind of pneumonia she had.<\/p>\n The records showed that the girl was initially admitted to the emergency room (ER) for \u201csecondary bacterial pneumonia,\u201d Kory told\u00a0The Defender<\/a>. At that time, her measles rash was already fading.<\/p>\n She was not administered the correct antibiotic for treating her secondary bacterial pneumonia until roughly two and a half days later. By that time, she had declined so severely that doctors had already placed her on a mechanical ventilator, Kory said.<\/p>\n Also, it appears there was a delay of more than nine hours from the time when the correct antibiotic was finally ordered and the time it was given, Kory said. \u201cLess than 24 hours later, she died \u2014 and she died rather catastrophically \u2026 suddenly her blood pressure crashed and she arrested.\u201d<\/p>\n Medical error is the\u00a0third leading cause of death in the U.S.<\/a>, according to a 2016 analysis by Johns Hopkins University researchers including\u00a0Dr. Marty Makary<\/a>, Trump\u2019s nominee to lead the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.<\/p>\n Hospital initially prescribed inappropriate antibiotic<\/strong><\/p>\n Kory broke down in more precise medical terms what appears to have happened.<\/p>\n When the girl was admitted to the ER, the staff made a general diagnosis that she had a secondary bacterial pneumonia. \u201cShe was clearly being admitted from the community so it was implied that it was a community-acquired pneumonia,\u201d Kory said, referring to how the girl didn\u2019t get the pneumonia from being in a hospital or healthcare facility.<\/p>\n They were \u201cabsolutely correct\u201d about that, Kory said.<\/p>\n But what they initially gave her for that diagnosis was incorrect, he said.<\/p>\n Generally, doctors put patients on two antibiotics \u201cto cover all the possibilities\u201d of what specific kind of bacterial pneumonia the patient may have.<\/p>\n Kory said:<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s in every\u00a0guideline<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 infectious disease, pulmonary \u2014 every guideline in the country tells you that for a hospitalized child or adult who gets admitted to the hospital, you put them on two antibiotics.<\/p>\n \u201cOne is from a category called\u00a0beta-lactams<\/a>, which is like\u00a0penicillin<\/a>,\u00a0cephalosporins<\/a>. And they [the hospital] got that part correct. They put her on something called\u00a0ceftriaxone<\/a>, which was excellent.<\/p>\n \u201cBut you always need to pair it with an antibiotic from a different category, which is called a\u00a0macrolide<\/a>\u00a0or a\u00a0quinolone<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n They didn\u2019t do that part, Kory said. \u201cThey didn\u2019t put her on the\u00a0most common<\/a>, which is\u00a0azithromycin<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n Instead, they put her on\u00a0vancomycin<\/a>, an antibiotic used for very drug-resistant organisms like MRSA.<\/p>\n According to the Mayo Clinic,\u00a0MRSA<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 short for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus \u2014 is an infection caused by a staph bacteria that\u2019s \u201cbecome resistant to many of the antibiotics used to treat ordinary staph infections.\u201d Most MRSA infections occur in hospitals or healthcare settings, like nursing homes or dialysis centers.<\/p>\n Giving vancomycin to the girl was an inappropriate choice, according to Kory.<\/p>\n He said:<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s no reason to think that this child would come in with MRSA from the community, from a Mennonite community. She\u2019s not coming from a facility where a lot of antibiotics are used. So it\u2019s a grievous error and it\u2019s an error which led to her death.\u201d<\/p>\n Hospital didn\u2019t change course of treatment for over two days<\/strong><\/p>\n The records show that the hospital didn\u2019t adjust the girl\u2019s antibiotics until a test came back showing that she had a type of bacterial pneumonia called \u201cmycoplasma pneumonia.\u201d<\/p>\n According to the Cleveland Clinic,\u00a0mycoplasma<\/a>\u00a0is a single form of bacteria that causes an infection that can occur in different parts of the body, such as the respiratory, urinary or genital tracts.<\/p>\n \u201cThe tragedy is that mycoplasma is an extremely common \u2014 what we call community-acquired \u2014 organism,\u201d Kory said. Azithromycin is very effective against mycoplasma, he said.<\/p>\n The hospital staff finally ordered it for her upon seeing her test results. But they should have ordered it much sooner, given that her bacterial pneumonia was community-acquired, Kory said.<\/p>\n Kory said it wasn\u2019t proper doctoring to let her decline for days without adjusting the treatment they were giving her. \u201cYou almost have three full days of a seriously declining medical status with no real changes to her treatment plan.\u201d<\/p>\n He added:<\/p>\n \u201cIf I\u2019m taking care of someone, and I\u2019m rounding on them every day and I see that today they\u2019re doing a little bit worse than yesterday. And then the next day they\u2019re doing a little bit worse than the day before, I\u2019m going to review exactly what I\u2019m doing and say, \u2018What am I missing? What am I missing? What else can I do?\u2019<\/p>\n \u201cAnd that didn\u2019t happen until a test showed up on a computer. And that\u2019s just not doctoring.\u201d<\/p>\n By this time, the child was in the intensive care unit. \u201cAnd from my review of the records,\u201d Kory continued, \u201cthe antibiotic was ordered at 11:00 p.m., or approximately 11:00 p.m., and as far as I can tell, it was not administered until 9:00 a.m. the next morning.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSo not only did you have several days delay of decline without the appropriate antibiotic,\u201d he said, \u201cbut then when they realized that they were missing the appropriate antibiotic, it took them, as far as I can tell, 10 hours to administer it.\u201d<\/p>\n By the time the girl received the correct antibiotic, she was already on a ventilator.<\/p>\n Father \u2018simply wants the truth out\u2019 so the public can talk about measles vs. vaccine risks<\/strong><\/p>\n Edwards and CHD Chief Scientific Officer Brian Hooker also reviewed the medical records. They concurred with Kory\u2019s analysis.<\/p>\n Edwards said, \u201cAs Dr. Kory\u2019s pointed out, unfortunately this was a big mistake, a tragic mistake \u2014 and I agree \u2014 a fatal mistake.\u201d<\/p>\n However, Edwards said the girl\u2019s father\u2014 who gave CHD permission to report on the medical records \u2014 didn\u2019t intend \u201cto inflame the situation or cause more division and more just hot rhetoric.\u201d<\/p>\n Edwards told a brief story to illustrate how divisive the\u00a0media<\/a>\u00a0coverage of the West Texas measles outbreak has been.<\/p>\n The day the girl died, Edwards was in the middle of an interview with a reporter. \u201cI remember that reporter grabbing his phone as the alert just came from the news announcing the \u2018first measles death.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Edwards said there was \u201calmost a giddiness\u201d in the reporter\u2019s response to the news.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was disgusting, actually,\u201d he said. \u201cI want people to know Peter [the father] doesn\u2019t want this information to be used on the other side in the same almost giddiness kind of way of, \u2018Aha, we got you.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n The girl\u2019s father \u201csimply wants the truth to be told so that other kids who potentially could go down the same path as his daughter won\u2019t have to.\u201d<\/p>\n The parents aren\u2019t sharing the information \u201cto give one side more ammunition\u201d in the ongoing public debate around measles.<\/p>\n The father told Edwards, \u201cI love my neighbor \u2014 and my neighbor\u2019s my enemy. My neighbor\u2019s the one who hurt me. My neighbor\u2019s the one who offends me.\u201d<\/p>\n Edwards said he wants the public to understand the father\u2019s reason for letting the medical records go public so that \u201cwe can maybe come to the table on this.\u201d<\/p>\n Edwards added:<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s potential risk of measles complications and death.\u00a0There\u2019s potential risk \u2014 complications and death \u2014 from\u00a0MMR<\/a>\u00a0[the measles-mumps-rubella\u00a0vaccine<\/a>]. We need to have that conversation at the table, both sides in a truthful, honest manner for the sake of these children.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s what he wants.\u201d<\/p>\n Watch CHD.TV interview with Dr. Pierre Kory:<\/strong><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/naturalblaze.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/medical-error-death-pneumonia-measles-feature-1024x534-1.jpg\")
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