Hospital staff urged to beware of C. difficile

Testifying Tuesday at the inquest into the death of a Saint John woman,a coroner from Ontario said hospital emergency staff need to learn more about Clostridium difficile, even if it's not clear Lillian Mullin was infected with it.

Dr. Albert Lauwers has reviewed the death of Mullin, 78, who died a day after being sent home from the Saint John Regional Hospital emergency department in 2005.

When Mullin showed up at an emergency room after five days of abdominal pain and diarrhea, hospital staff decided she had the flu, and sent her home.

"Now the hitch is we don't really know what caused her diarrhea, and it's only speculation —and nothing more than that— that it's C. difficile, because we cannot prove it at this point,"Lauwers testified.

Mullin's relatives believe she may have had a C. difficile infection when she was taken to the hospital.

Lauwers told the inquest that health-care staff need to learn all they can about C. difficile bacteria infections, because they are showing up with increasing frequency in Canadian hospitals.

Dr. Kalman Protzner, who conducted an autopsy on Mullin's body, told the coroner's juryearlier that doctors had advised him Mullinmight have died from ischemic bowel disease or C. difficile, and he couldn't prove it one way or another because he didn't take a stool sample.

When hethought to get one, he said, the body had been moved.

Protzner said he now takes a stool sample as part of every autopsy, even if he's certain of the cause of death.

Mullin's daughter, Shirley MacAulay, believes her mother should have been treated for C. difficile.

"If they had investigated it sooner, maybe she would have responded to the antibiotic use.… She could have died a week later from something else, but give us that chance," she said.

It will be up to the five members of the coroner's jury to decide if more could have been done for Lillian Mullin, and what changes, if any, should be considered by the health-care system.