Blood loss during birth ‘did not lead to fatal heart attack’
Nora Hyland, aged 31, a Malaysian woman living at Charlotte Quay in Dublin 4, died on the operating table at the National Maternity Hospital on February 13, 2012, within three hours of undergoing an emergency caesarean section to deliver her son, Frederick. The inquest into her death had previously heard that a labelling error in the laboratory contributed to a 37-minute delay in Ms Hyland receiving a blood transfusion.
No emergency supply units of O-negative, the universal blood type, were kept in operating theatres at the NMH at the time. The specialist obstetrics registrar treating Ms Hyland made the request for the units at 12.03am after finding that she had lost approximately one litre of blood following the C-section. A docket showed the blood being requested from the lab at 12.13am. The blood was not administered until 12.40am, while Ms Hyland was undergoing a laparotomy to stop the bleeding, with her total blood loss estimated at 3.5 litres following that procedure. She suffered a drop in blood pressure at 1.05am and went into pulseless electrical activity arrest shortly afterward.
