The parents of a premature baby who died of severe lung inflammation repeatedly asked for antibiotics, but were told his condition was “like the common cold”, an inquest has heard.
Ben Condon, the son of the British Olympic athlete Allyn Condon, was born at 29 weeks and spent seven weeks in a paediatric intensive care unit.
He returned home with his parents, Allyn and Jenny Condon from Weston-super-Mare in Somerset, on 7 April last year, but began coughing and sneezing two days later.
The infant was taken to Weston General hospital and transferred to Bristol Royal children’s hospital on 10 April after becoming lifeless and struggling to breathe.
Avon coroner’s court heard that doctors gave Ben antibiotics for 72 hours, but stopped after diagnosing him with human metapneumovirus (hMPV), describing it as “like the common cold to most people”.
He died at 9.07pm on 17 April, about an hour after antibiotics were administered again, of severe inflammatory lung disease caused by the hMPV and sepsis syndrome.
Allyn Condon, who took part in both the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney and the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, told the inquest he arrived at the hospital at 5.40am on the day of his son’s death and found him “bluish grey”. Staff assured him that the infant would be given antibiotics.
“By 3pm that day antibiotics still hadn’t been given and Ben looked like he was in a terrible state,” he said. “I sat by Ben’s bedside and asked and asked the nurse for something to be done for him, but no senior consultant attended for the entire morning until 3pm. By the afternoon he was visibly distressed. Ben rapidly deteriorated.”
He said Ben suffered his first cardiac arrest while doctors changed his ventilator, and second later the same day.
“Over the next five hours we had to watch our baby going through a horrifying series of procedures to try to save his life,” he said. “We were told that his blood was poisoned and he wasn’t strong enough to fight the hMPV virus. We had been told this was not a concern and it was just a common cold. That didn’t sit right with us.
“The consultant nurses reassured us that he just had a cold and he would start to pull through. We felt that everyone was dismissive of us.”
The inquest heard doctors had initially given the cause of Ben’s death as acute respiratory distress syndrome, hMPV virus and prematurity.
A blood test taken on the night of Ben’s death found he had sepsis syndrome, but this was not present in tests that morning.
Dr James Fraser of Bristol Royal hospital for children said Ben’s death was connected to severe inflammatory lung disease caused by the hMPV. “Undoubtedly he died with sepsis syndrome, but I don’t think he died of sepsis syndrome,” he said.
The consultant said that giving Ben antibiotics earlier could have led to more resistant organisms “getting a grip”, a particular concern in premature babies.
Dr Suzy Dean, who works in the paediatric intensive care unit at Bristol Royal children’s hospital, told the hearing that she considered Ben to have hMPV and not a bacterial infection in the days before his death. “It is a cold-like virus,” she said. “It is the young and very old in society who are more susceptible to these sorts of viruses.”
Dr John Grant, a consultant at Bristol Royal, said that even if Ben had been given antibiotics earlier on 17 April, it would not have prevented his death.
The inquest is expected to conclude on Wednesday.
