Pretoria - An Emalahleni widow is set to receive R450 000 from the Gauteng MEC for Health for loss and support after her husband died in the Steve Biko Academic Hospital, a few days after cancer was removed from his tongue.
Hennie Venter died after a feeding tube was wrongly inserted into his lungs, instead of his stomach.
His wife, Roeline, claimed the damages in the High Court in Pretoria, stating that her husband supported her financially at the time of his death.
Judge Sulete Potterill found that the doctors and staff at the hospital were negligent as they did not ensure that the tube was in fact inserted into Hennie’s stomach.
He was admitted to hospital on August 29, 2011, as he had a carcinoma on his tongue and on the floor of his mouth. The cancer was at an advanced stage and the doctors decided to remove the cancer despite Hennie’s history of smoking for 30 years.
It was said that his smoking was the cause of the cancer.
The operation took 13 hours to complete and he had to be fed artificially afterwards.
A tube was placed through his nose and it was supposed to reach his stomach. The court heard that the medical staff normally inserted this type of tube “blindly” as they couldn’t see whether the tip reached the stomach. The staff were therefore required to test whether the tube was indeed inserted into the stomach.
Three tests can establish this, the most unreliable is to listen with a stethoscope for “gurgling” noises in the stomach after air is injected in the tube. The most reliable test is to take an X-ray after the insertion, the court was told.
On September 11, Hennie was transferred from ICU to high care as his recovery was good. The tube was inserted the next day. He died two days later. His death certificate stated “procedure-related death”.
An expert who testified said the feeding of the patient through the nose and down the mouth was not the best option. It would have been better to directly place the tube into his stomach, especially as he had undergone mouth surgery.
Doctors, on the other hand, denied negligence and said he died as terminal sepsis had set in. Experts who testified on behalf of the widow, were of the opinion that Hennie died as a result of feeding reaching his lungs. This resulted in sepsis, organ failure and eventually death.
These experts said when Hennie’s condition deteriorated shortly after the tube was inserted, the staff should have observed these worrying signs and acted. It was further testified that it wasn’t common practice to insert a tube into a mouth and down a throat after a 13-hour mouth operation.
This was especially so as Hennie had to remove some of his teeth before the operation. Apart from it being very painful and uncomfortable for the patient to have a tube through his mouth under these circumstances, it was also impractical, Judge Potterill was told.
She concluded that the staff at the hospital were indeed negligent, as they failed to ascertain via X-ray where the tip of the tube was and they incorrectly inserted it into the lungs.
Pretoria News