Terrible news this past week when actress Natasha Richardson died, subsequent to what seemed to be a minor fall while learning to ski.
Such cases always spur second-guessing, and as this post at Kevin MD illustrates, this case is no different. Some people are turning this into a political football, wondering if somehow the Canadian style of national health care system is what did Ms. Richardson in. When I read the actual timeline, it seems clear that this was a case of the accumulation of a bunch of questionable human decisions every step of the way. Throw in the lack of helicopter availability in the area where they were vacationing, and in a case where time is of the essence, they lost it over and over.
The single most questioned decision has got to be: Who turned away the ambulance that arrived 17 minutes after her fall, and why did those EMTs agree to leave without even seeing the patient? The two hours lost right from the beginning is likely be all the delay required to make her situation unsalvageable.
And yet, how many of us would do the same if we felt fine, could walk, talk, etc? Well, maybe not anymore. But just in the comments and links in this BlogHer post, plenty of women share their stories of being bonked on the head and not immediately jumping to get checked out.
We can only hope that this tragic death convinces people that a head injury is nothing to ignore or "wait and see" about...hit on head? Get thee to an emergency room...stat!
We were all very shocked that Natasha died from such a seemingly small accident. I think three factors were critical to her death: You already mentioned the delay due to no helicopter. But also, Natasha's own dismissal of medical care. I believe that at least in the US, if someone refuses care, medical service providers cannot insist unless the 'victim' poses a risk to the safety of others. The fact that she probably injured an artery rather than a vein meant the hematoma grew much faster and she didn't have as much time to get to medical care.
It's no comfort, but worth noting that her death has educated so many people about the dangers of head injuries. Natasha may save many, many lives now.
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In the case of Princess Diana's death, there was criticism of the French protocol of giving treatment on-site rather than rushing to a hospital, the American protocol. It would be interesting to have data, and to hear the opinions of emergency medical personnel on which protocol would seem to yield better results.
Posted by: Maria Tseng | March 29, 2009 at 09:54 PM