Coroner issues anaesthetic safety warning after patient death

A coroner has warned that a common practice used by anaesthetists could lead to deaths after concluding that a woman died because she received too large a dose of a local anaesthetic during an operation.Rachel Gibson, 47, a cancer scientist who had severe osteoarthritis, underwent hip replacement surgery at Spire Lea Hospital in Cambridge in April 2022. She had an unwitnessed cardiac arrest after she was taken back to her room and was transferred to Addenbrooke’s Hospital, where she was found to have irreversible brain damage. She died three months later.Philip Barlow, assistant coroner for Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, found that Gibson’s cardiac arrest had been caused by excessive administration of the local anaesthetic ropivacaine during surgery.Barlow wrote in a Prevention of Future Deaths report,1 sent to the president of the Royal College of Anaesthetists, “The evidence was that it is routine practice before the procedure for the anaesthetist to give…
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