AN inquest into the death of a young girl from Runcorn found that the child’s feeding pump which she relied upon for vital nutrition had stopped functioning properly during the night.
Amelia Louise Edwards from Sutton Weaver was born with a rare health condition which meant she needed the machine to maintain her blood sugar levels over night.
But the inquest found that on the evening before Amelia’s death on April 8, 2021, the feeding pump had started to malfunction due to a build-up of pressure – despite the machine showing no sign of an issue or sounding an alert to a function problem.
The inquest was heard at Warrington's Coroners' Court last Friday, 13.
Amelia’s parents, Lisa and Stephen Edwards had reported having no concern at the time as to whether the machine was working, having followed their usual nights routine, switching on the feeding machine at 7:30pm for the regular night feed.
But the following morning, the four-year-olds parents woke to find Ameila in a concerning condition and immediately called paramedics, where she was then taken to Whiston Hospital in Rainhill to be seen.
Amelia was moved to Alder Hey Children’s Hospital, Liverpool, for further treatment where she sadly died at 11:55am.
The coroner’s report revealed how it was not until Lisa picked up and held her daughter that she noticed something was wrong and Stephen then checked the pump to see the feed bottle was still full, with the night feed having meant to have ended at 8:15am that morning.
An ambulance was called as Amelia was unresponsive and Lisa and Stephen attempted to set up the feeding pump again to begin giving her the nutrition she had missed through the night, but they noticed a blockage.
They began to apply a gluclose solution to Amelia's gums and attempted to fix the pump.
Paramedics then arrived and Amelia was given glucose injections before she began vomiting and was taken to the hospital for immediate medical attention.
Amelia suffered from severe gastro-oesophageal reflux meaning fluid would regularly enter into her airways and so was fed using a feeding tube under a strict feeding programme created by dieticians.
Lisa and Stephen were taught by Alder Hey how to correctly operate the pump so that Amelia could live comfortably at her family home and her parents could handle her care.
The device was used on a regular day to day basis and would beep to alert when a feed had been completed.
But the investigation found that due to the machine having been switched on and off at different intervals, it had re-baselined and while the motor on the pump had continued to turn and the display screen had continued to appear as working, the machine was in fact no longer producing the feed.
The pump manufacturer, Abbott Laboratories referred to the case as an isolated one and have been in touch with the NHS since to alert all users of the feeding pump of the incident and have provided fresh guidance on how to use the equipment.
Detective Inspector Andrew Wallace from Cheshire Police said there were no suspicious circumstances and no evidence of any third-party involvement regarding Amelia’s death.
Home Office forensic pathologist Dr. Johnson stated the causes of death to be a 1a hypoxic ischaemic encephalopathy brain injury, a 1b profound hypoglycemia, and 1c congenital hyperinsulinism which is a condition that occurs when the body develops too much insulin.
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