RED ALERT: The blood lab at the city-run Coney Island Hospital was shut down yesterday after a patient died there following a botched transfusion in which he was given a batch of blood that had been mislabeled as his type. (
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There’s bad blood at Coney Island Hospital — and it’s deadly.
A 40-year-old male patient died at the city-run hospital last week after receiving the wrong type blood during a transfusion, The Post has learned.
Transfusions that don’t match a patient’s blood type — giving Type-A to a person who is Type-B, for example — causes the body to attack the new red blood cells, a violent and painful reaction that can lead to shock and a fatal kidney shutdown.
“The blood was mislabeled in the lab. It wasn’t a nursing issue,” said one hospital professional who spoke yesterday on condition of anonymity. “It shouldn’t have happened. It’s just carelessness.
“It’s a huge problem,” he added.
A source said the fatal error occurred in the hospital’s sixth-floor lab, where blood drawn from patients is screened and “typed.”
A technician labeled the patient’s blood as the wrong type, and the patient was given the wrong blood during a transfusion.
Yesterday the lab was shuttered.
Blood for Coney Island Hospital patients is now being typed by technicians at Kings County Hospital Center, with the results then phoned in to Coney Island.
Coney Island continues to maintain its own stores of banked blood, and surgeries and ER treatment have not been curtailed.
Still, emergency-surgery patients are for now all being given Type-O blood, because it can be used universally.
“Our deepest condolences go out to the family . . . We are working with the state to resolve the situation as quickly as possible,” said Ian Michaels, spokesman for the city Health and Hospitals Corporation.
State inspectors are expected to be on site tomorrow, sources said.
“Of course I’m worried about a blood transfusion,” patient Nicole jacobsen, 31, said yesterday.
“They’re all so understaffed here,” she said. “I couldn’t get any attention last week and I overheard someone saying there’s a problem with a patient’s blood transfusion on the fourth floor.”
“I fear for my life at this hospital,” agreed patient Myrtle Irvin, 53.
“I wouldn’t put my dog in here,” she added.
Medical staffers were told of the snafu at a meeting yesterday.
Many remembered a fatal transfusion error in 1995 and a string of five nonfatal transfusion mistakes from 1990 to 1994 at the same hospital.
On July 21, 1995, 30-year-old hero paramedic Ira Medjuck was given A-positive blood instead of O-positive while being treated after a serious car crash on the Belt Parkway in Brooklyn.
Medjuck clung to life for an agonizing month before succumbing.
A state Health Department report that year condemned Coney Island Hospital for “serious systemic problems” in handling blood.
“I would go anywhere but Coney Island,” a staffer said yesterday. “Even Kings County is better.”