‘Her death was only a matter of time’

The family of a Swakopmund woman who died from a pulmonary embolism has lost a legal battle against Medi-Clinic Swakopmund and a doctor after the High Court found that the fatal blood clot was already too advanced to have been stopped.

The woman’s husband and two daughters had argued that she could have survived if the pulmonary embolism, a life-threatening blood clot that travels to the lungs, had been identified and treated earlier.

But judge Orben Sibeya found that the family failed to prove that earlier diagnosis and treatment would probably have prevented her death.

“It appears, on the evidence, that her death was only a matter of time," Sibeya found.

The judgment was delivered earlier this month.

The lawsuit was filed in July 2021, three years after the woman’s death in July 2018.

Her husband and two daughters sued Medi-Clinic Swakopmund and Dr Christoff Coetzee for damages arising from her death.

They claimed N$450 000 each – a combined N$1.35 million – for psychological shock, trauma, anxiety, stress, grief and loss of consortium.

Advanced

In 2022, the family’s medical expert, Dr Gregory Prominitz, testified that earlier administration of an anticoagulant such as Clexane would have given the woman a “fighting chance” and increased her chances of survival.

However, the judge found that this did not establish the causal link required to hold the defendants liable.

The court applied the “but-for” test, which required the family to prove that the woman would probably have survived if the alleged failure to diagnose and treat the pulmonary embolism had not occurred.

Separate medical experts testified that the pulmonary embolism had already advanced significantly before the woman reached hospital. They explained that heparin does not dissolve an existing clot and that Clexane would take at least four hours to become effective, while she died much sooner. One said a large clot likely blocked blood flow from the right side of the heart, causing heart failure and cardiac arrest.

Judge Sibeya accepted their evidence and found that the woman's death was highly likely to have been inevitable. He also rejected the claim that fluids given at hospital worsened her condition, noting that her blood pressure improved after the treatment. 

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