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In a sad story coming out of Canada, a 2-year-old child died while waiting to be seen in an Emergency Department:

The Ontario coroner's office is investigating the death of a two-year-old child in a hospital emergency room waiting area this week.

The boy died in his father's arms while waiting to see a doctor at Toronto East General hospital early Monday morning.

The Toronto Sun reported yesterday that the child was brought to the hospital by his parents around 5:30 Monday morning. He had reportedly vomited and had diarrhea the day before, and when his condition did not improve his parents tried to have him seen by an emergency room doctor.

They told the Sun that they waited for an hour without being seen by a doctor. Then, their son stopped breathing.

Source/Read more at: The Globe and Mail

While I feel tremendous sympathy for the family, and the loss of their child must be extremely difficult, I don't think it could have been avoided, based on the limited information in the article. With the current state of overtaxed emergency departments, waiting an hour to see a physician would be quick by most standards, especially for something as seemingly-innocuous as an episode of vomiting/diarrhea the day before. Unfortunately, triage guidelines do not rate vomiting/diarrhea high on the list of what qualifies as an emergency, unless signs/symptoms of severe dehydration/electrolyte imbalances (i.e. lethargy) were present. I wasn't there, so I can't comment on that. Since death by acute diarrhea is virtually unheard of in developed countries (Mortality rate: 0.0002 Source), there must have been some other undiagnosed underlying disease processes at play. It would be interesting to see what the coroner's report turns up, which hopefully can improve triage guidelines so this doesn't happen again.

Hat Tip: Kevin, MD

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