The Newham General Hospital apologizes for the death by bite of a female cat

A woman with an infected cat bite died of sepsis after being discharged from the hospital home without adequate treatment.

Newham General Hospital apologizes for the death of 61-year-old Gabriele Kreichgauer.

A young doctor who saw her looked for a "cat bite" in an internet database, but was informed of the cat's claw fever, which is undergoing treatment different.

She went out without antibiotics and died two days later.

Barts Health NHS Trust, which runs the hospital in East London, said: "We are sorry for the gaps in the care we have given to Mrs. Kreichgauer."

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Philip Barlow, Deputy Coroner for Inner South London, said in a report on preventing future deaths that when Ms. Kreichgauer visited A & E on January 21, 2018, the young doctor had used a paid database. on the Internet called Uptodate.

Mr. Barlow stated that when the doctor was prescribed to fight cat fever, he was considering prescribing the antibiotic azithromycin – but this was not given to Mrs. Kreichgauer.

However, the coroner said that the appropriate treatment for the cat's bite on the hand was different and that "even if he had been given antibiotics, it is likely that they would not have been effective".

Mr. Barlow stated that the reason why Ms. Kreichgauer had been released from the hospital without antibiotics "seems to have been that no one has definitively verified what treatment was being considered and whether this treatment was given to her. administered ".

Ms. Kreichgauer developed sepsis and died at Queen Elizabeth Hospital on January 23rd.

Barts Health NHS Trust said: "After studying the causes, we reviewed our processes and put in place systems to provide safe clinical care, and we also contacted UpToDate – an approved medical resource database – mess. "