Kimberly Sampson Wiki
Kimberly Sampson Biography
Who was Kimberly Sampson ?
Two mothers who died of herpes after giving birth could have been infected by a single surgeon, the BBC found.
The doctor performed caesarean sections on both women in 2018.
The families, who were told there were no connections between the deaths, are calling for investigations to be opened.
The East Kent Hospitals Trust says it was unable to identify the source of the infection and that the surgeon had no history of the virus.
Maternal deaths are rare. In more than 2.1 million births in the UK between 2017 and 2019, there were 191 maternal deaths within six weeks of giving birth, according to official figures.
How old was Kimberly Sampson ?
She was 29 year old.
Death
Deaths caused by HSV-1, one of the two strains of the herpes simplex virus, are almost unheard of in healthy people. It is a common infection that can cause sores around the mouth or genitals.
However, in May and July 2018, two young mothers died from an infection caused by the virus.
Kimberly Sampson, 29, a barber, lived with her three-year-old daughter at her mother’s home in the Kentish coastal town of Whitstable.
“She was fun, loving and had a lot of friends,” her mother Yvette Sampson tells the BBC. “She was a brilliant mom and that’s what she wanted to be.”
Kimberly’s pregnancy progressed smoothly and on May 3, 2018, she went to the delivery room at Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother Hospital in Margate.
“She thought everything was going to be okay,” says Yvette. But things started to go wrong. Her labor was not progressing rapidly, her mother says, and Kimberly kept saying the baby was stuck.
Ultimately, doctors decided to perform a C-section, also known as a C-section, where a baby is delivered through cuts in the woman’s abdomen and uterus.
Her son was born, but Kimberly needed a blood transfusion because she was injured during the operation. After two days, she asked to be discharged with her baby. But she was in a lot of pain and, even though she could barely walk, she left the hospital with her mother.
But the pain got worse. Even a gentle touch was enough to make her cry out in agony, Yvette says.
“She deteriorated day after day, she couldn’t eat, she couldn’t sleep.”
Her GP suggested they call 999 and Kimberly was taken back to the hospital in an ambulance. Doctors thought she was suffering from bacterial sepsis, a potentially very serious condition. She was sent back to her maternity ward and given antibiotics. They didn’t work and her condition worsened.
A series of operations followed as doctors struggled to identify and treat the infection. Eight days after being readmitted to the hospital, a consulting microbiologist suggested trying the antiviral drug Acyclovir, which is used to treat herpes infections.
Kimberly was transferred to Kings College Hospital in London, where she was diagnosed with a catastrophic herpes infection.
While she was in intensive care, Yvette says she was told that her daughter was only “hours or days old.”
On May 22, Kimberly died.
Samantha Mulchay and her husband Ryan
A death from herpes is quite rare, but just six weeks later, Samantha Mulcahy would die from the same condition.
The 32-year-old nursing nurse lived with her husband, Ryan, 20 miles from Kimberly.
The couple had been together since they were teenagers. Ryan had first seen her when she was working part-time at her local Tesco, but it took him months to gather the courage from her to ask her out.
Samantha’s mother, Nicola Foster, says her daughter was excited to be pregnant with her first child. “I think she was already talking about having more children.”
But what should have been a moment of joy for them turned into a tragedy. Samantha went into labor four weeks before her due date and, in July 2018, she was admitted to William Harvey Hospital in Ashford, which is run by the same Trust as the hospital where Kimberly’s baby was born.
After 17 hours of contractions and pushing, she was exhausted and in pain.
After some troubling blood test results, she was taken for a cesarean section. Her daughter was born healthy, but because doctors were concerned about signs of the pre-eclampsia blood pressure condition, they decided to keep Samantha under observation.
After three days, her condition began to deteriorate, even though she no longer showed signs of pre-eclampsia. Her stomach swelled, she had a fever, and her blood pressure rose.
Samantha became so swollen that her mother said that she looked like she had “elephant legs.” Like Kimberly, doctors thought Samantha suffered from bacterial sepsis. She was also given antibiotics, but they didn’t work.
Doctors asked a London hospital for support and surgeons
As his condition rapidly worsened, his organs began to shut down. She was taken to intensive care where she stayed for four days.
At one point, a doctor suggested that she treat her with antiviral drugs, but the microbiology department advised them to continue with antibiotics.
Doctors asked a London hospital for support and surgeons took her to the operating room to try to stabilize her.
“They told us that sadly they couldn’t save her,” Nicola says. “That she was gone. She passed away.”
Investigation
Post-mortem investigation found that her Samantha had died of multiple organ failure following a “disseminated herpes simplex type 1 infection.”
In other words, an overwhelming infection caused by the HSV-1 virus.
Neither women’s baby was found to be infected with the virus.
Both women had what is known as a primary infection, which means that this was the first time they had contracted herpes.
Hospital analysis of the women’s medical history indicates that they had not had herpes before, so they would not have had antibodies, or natural protection, against the virus. This, combined with the fact that women in late pregnancy have reduced immune system protection, would have made them more vulnerable to severe HSV infection.
Herpes viruses are usually spread by skin-to-skin contact with someone who has the virus.
Herpes infections are common, and nearly 70% of adults have one of the two types of the virus by the age of 25.
Some people will develop cold sores or genital herpes, but about two-thirds will have mild or no symptoms.
Source: Herpes Virus Association
More than a year after the deaths of the women, each of the families received a letter from the coroner, Katrina Hepburn, saying there would be no investigation in these cases. The letters acknowledged that there had been a similar case, but said there was “no connection” between the two deaths. They also exposed the belief of the pathologist who investigated both deaths, that the women had been infected with herpes “prior to their admission to hospital.”
He believes the surgeon most likely passed the infection
He believes the surgeon most likely passed the infection to the two women accidentally during the cesarean section.
“The only common source here, in a hospital setting, would be the surgeon who performed the operations,” he says.
He says the surgeon may have had a herpetic whitlow, a herpes infection on his finger, which could have “spread the herpes directly onto the woman’s abdomen.”
This, he says, would have allowed it to spread throughout the abdomen quickly and explains why the women had no external lesions, which you would normally expect to see with a herpes infection.
According to the NHS website, the symptoms of a whitlow can range from a small lump to open lesions, meaning they can go unnoticed.
“Many of these will occur without obvious signs, or will be so tiny that you won’t be able to identify them,” says Greenhouse.
All surgeons wear gloves during surgery, but Greenhouse says it could have been possible for them to split during operations allowing the virus to spread.
A small study conducted in 1990 suggested that up to 54% of gloves used in caesarean sections had holes when tested with water after operations.
Other experiments after other forms of surgery produced similar results.
“It is a very rare but biologically plausible method of transmission,” Greenhouse explains.
Four other experts in sexual health and virology have endorsed Greenhouse’s theory.
In a statement, the East Kent Hospitals Trust says the surgeon underwent a verbal occupational health check in which he said he had no history of herpes infection and had no lesions on his hands, although he was not tested for the virus. at the time of operations.
Family
Referring to the email stating that the virus type was “rare,” compared to other samples collected in the PHE lab, Greenhouse says this makes the likelihood that the women were infected from a common source in the hospital is more likely, and much less likely. they were infected in the community.
The East Kent Hospitals Trust notes that the PHE report says that although there was a “high probability that they were epidemiologically linked” to HSV “this finding does not mean that the viral isolates have an immediate common source or are part of a chain of transmission”.
The families of the two women have asked the coroner to initiate investigations into the deaths.
Yvette Sampson says it is important for children who have been left without their mother: “When they are a little older, they will need to know why their mother died.”
In a statement, Dr. Rebecca Martin, East Kent Hospitals Medical Director, said:
“Our condolences go out to the families and friends of Kimberley and Samantha.
“East Kent Hospitals sought the support of specialists from Public Health England (PHE) following the tragic deaths of Kimberley and Samantha in 2018. Investigations led by the Trust and the Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch took the advice of several experts and concluded that it was not possible. identify the source of any of the infections.
“The surgeon who performed both caesarean sections did not have any hand injuries that could have caused an infection or a history of the virus.
“Kimberley and Samantha’s treatment was based on the different symptoms they exhibited during their illness. Our thoughts are with their families and we will do our best to respond to their concerns.”
Peter Greenhouse is now conducting further investigation into the deaths, in the hope that that means new mothers with unexplained sepsis-like symptoms will be tested for herpes as a matter of course.
“I hope the research will eventually change the pattern, so that more people benefit from an earlier diagnosis. It is the only constructive outcome one could hope for, after such a tragic scenario.”
Source: WikiSoon
