Southampton surgery may have fatally infected Jersey woman

Wednesday 30 May 2018

A knee operation at Southampton Hospital may have triggered the fatal blood poisoning that caused a 60-year-old Jersey woman to lose her life, an inquest has concluded.

Mrs Tina Baudains, who was born in St. Helier, died on Saturday 2 December 2017 in Jersey General Hospital’s Intensive Care Unit.

An inquest opened to determine the cause of her death heard how she had first come to hospital suffering from “general malaise with fever due to suspected septicaemia [blood poisoning]" days earlier.

Her condition then rapidly deteriorated, eventually leading to multiple organ failure.

Pictured: Morier House, where the inquest took place.

Although “extensive” pre- and post-mortem tests were undertaken to discover how she contracted septicaemia, officials were unable to determine the exact site of infection.

However, it was strongly suspected that it originated from replacement surgery on her left knee, which she had undergone in Southampton on 15 November – around 2.5 weeks before she was admitted to Jersey hospital with a temperature.

Presiding Deputy Viscount Mark Harris made the finding last week.

It comes after a global study found that a fifth of infections picked up during standard operations worldwide were resistant to antibiotics, causing thousands of Britons to be affected by superbugs each year.

In Jersey, over 15,000 surgical procedures are conducted annually. Over 20 islanders have been hit with post-operative infections following routine hip and knee surgery replacements on the island over the past five years, information released under the Freedom of Information Law revealed.