USA: 1 in 4 child deaths after ER visits are preventable, study finds

The morning after Phyllis Rabinowitz brought her newborn daughter home from the hospital, she knew something was terribly wrong. The baby, Rebecca, had thick mucus, trouble breathing and lethargy unlike anything Ms Rabinowitz had seen in her first child.

But during multiple visits to the emergency room, doctors told Ms. Rabinowitz that Rebecca had a common cold and sent them home. At nine days old, Rebecca died; her parents learned from an autopsy that the cause was a viral infection that could have been managed had she been admitted.

More than 80% of emergency departments in United States hospitals are not fully prepared for paediatric cases, a new study finds, despite the fact that children make up about 20% of visits each year.

The new analysis, published in the journal JAMA Network Open, estimated that if every emergency department in the United States had the core features of “paediatric readiness,” more than a quarter of the child deaths that follow ER visits could be prevented, a figure that equates to thousands of young lives each year.

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Source: New York Times, 1 November 2024