If your wife, husband, partner, child or other family member died because medical professionals failed to provide adequate necrotising fasciitis care, you need independent legal advice.
Necrotising fasciitis is an area of medical negligence we deal with a lot, as sadly many families are left bereaved because the infection was not detected in time.
If this is something to have affected your family, please get in touch with our friendly team here at Glynns Solicitors. We will share our expert knowledge with you, advising whether more could have been done to save your loved one.
Flesh-eating disease death
Necrotising fasciitis is a type of soft tissue infection. It is not a well-known infection, although it is described more widely as ‘the flesh-eating disease’. Indeed, necrotising fasciitis is rare and Public Health England predicts there are just 500 new cases in the UK each year. Nevertheless, if your family is unfortunate enough to be one of these patients, you will quickly understand just how devastating it can be.
As a soft-tissue infection, it happens when certain types of bacteria get into the tissue via a break in the skin. This in itself can cause great confusion, as the bacteria can get into a tiny gap that the patient did not even know they had – such as a nick or cut. Sometimes the wound is more obvious, such as a surgical incision. However, many cases of necrotising fasciitis affect previously healthy individuals who are suddenly struck by severe symptoms.
Once inside the body, the bacteria begin to reproduce. This multiplication process means the infection spreads across an ever growing area inside the body. It also causes the bacteria to release a toxin which damages the nearby tissue, muscle and blood vessels. This damage means the blood cannot reach the tissue, causing even greater deterioration because the tissue become deprived of oxygen (which is carried in the blood).
The effects of the oxygen deprivation, known medically as ‘ischaemia’, are gangrene and tissue necrosis. In other words, the tissue dies. Tissue death is not something that can be treated, so instead the tissue must simply be removed. If a large amount of tissue has become necrotic, it must all be removed or the infection will continue to spread. This can leave huge gaping defects, unsightly scarring and sometimes a limb amputation.
Fatal tissue infection
Widespread tissue necrosis is certainly very harmful. It can also lead to fatal complications, as the bacteria will advance so far that it enters the bloodstream. The medical term for blood poisoning is sepsis, or septicaemia. Sepsis claims around 12,500 lives in the UK each year. It really is a lethal condition and must be prevented, or at the very least treated in the early stages.
What happens with necrotising fasciitis is that the bacteria get into the bloodstream, causing the infection to travel across the body in the blood vessels. The immune system tries to fight the infection on all fronts, opening the blood vessels to mobilise the clotting agents. Unfortunately this response is harmful, because it causes inflammation and clotting throughout the body.
When there is inflammation, the blood will not be able to pass through the vessels. This affects the hearts ability to pump blood around the body, in turn causing the blood pressure to drop. Ultimately the organs will become starved of oxygen. The organs cannot function without oxygen and they will soon begin to shut down. Multi-system organ failure is difficult to recover from and it may prove fatal.
Can a necrotising fasciitis death be prevented?
Yes, a necrotising fasciitis death can be prevented. Not everyone who gets necrotising fasciitis will die and plenty do survive.
However, survival is entirely dependent upon the early recognition and treatment of the condition. This is absolutely key: the sooner treatment is provided, the better the patient’s prospects of survival. Without treatment, there is a 100% mortality rate. With delayed treatment, the patient will develop sepsis, after which there is a 30% to 50% mortality rate.
Thus it is essential that treatment is provided before the patient reaches the sepsis stage. After this, he/she will fall critically unwell and may suffer fatal complications. Even if the patient does pull through, it is probable that extensive debridement will have been performed and that there will be a long recovery period.
To avoid this, treatment must be given in the early stages of necrotising fasciitis – before the bacteria have entered the bloodstream. Treatment must include intravenous antibiotics and emergency debridement surgery, where all the dead tissue will be removed. This will greatly improve the patient’s prospects and will minimise the extent of tissue death.
Failure to recognise necrotising fasciitis caused death
In order to undergo timely treatment, medical practitioners must realise that a patient has necrotising fasciitis soon after they present, either at a GP practice or a hospital.
Understandably most patients will never have heard of necrotising fasciitis until they actually develop the disease. Even then, many doctors will not give the patient and their family the medical name, and it is only when reading the medical notes, discharge summary or death certificate that the condition is discovered to be ‘necrotising fasciitis’.
Therefore patients are at the mercy of medical practitioners to accurately assess their symptoms as being indicative of a soft tissue infection and order immediate investigations. The patient must also depend upon these investigations being correctly interpreted as necrotising fasciitis and, once a diagnosis is achieved, emergency debridement surgery arranged.
Unfortunately this opens up a number of opportunities for medical error. Most commonly, delays occur during the diagnostic process, as the patient is wrongly thought to have another illness such as the flu or is just not given a diagnosis. This is dangerous, as it provides more time for the bacteria to spread to a greater area of tissue, and possibly to the bloodstream.
Necrotising fasciitis death claim
If medical errors do cause delays in the treatment of necrotising fasciitis, the patient will suffer injuries that could otherwise have been avoided – or at least limited. If the patient dies, or is left with life-changing injuries, there will be grounds for a medical negligence claim.
If your loved one did not survive necrotising fasciitis because of poor medical care, please get in touch with us today. You could be entitled to make a claim on behalf of his/her estate. We will help you access justice.
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