A hospital in Castelo Branco is under investigation after a teenager sent home complaining of strong stomach pains returned six hours later in a state of cardiac arrest. Eighteen-year-old André Antunes never recovered consciousness. His heart stopped three times on the way to the hospital and then stopped a further two times on the operating table, writes Correio da Manhã.
According to the Portuguese paper, the youngster was found to have a perforated stomach and serious infection in his intestines.
But when he entered Hospital Amato Lusitano with his mother the day before, hospital staff are reported to have said the symptoms were very probably those of a hangover – as André had come straight from a nearby music festival.
According to Correio da Manhã, however, the youngster had started feeling ill at the Festival da Juventude de Gouveia and it had been Red Cross personnel there who had advised him to go to hospital.
Arriving at 4pm on Thursday (April 20), André underwent a series of tests before being discharged at 10pm. It was six hours later that “he began to feel worse”, wrote the paper, collapsing in the arms of his mother.
The tragic death – which has left a single mother without her only child – has shocked the whole community. School friends told the Portuguese publication how they were incapable of understanding what could have happened.
Childhood mate Ricardo Alves said that André had never complained of any kind of illness before. “He was always really healthy.”
The president of the hospital’s administrative board, Vieira Pires, has confirmed that an internal inquiry has now been opened “to determine what happened” and to find out why a young man was sent home when his life was in possible danger.
