Patient claims she suffered brain injury after B.C. doctors lost track of opioids given for pain

A woman has filed a lawsuit against Interior Health and three physicians that claims she suffered an opiate overdose and subsequent brain injury after doctors lost track of how much medication she'd been given for pain during a hospital stay in Cranbrook, B.C., two years ago.

In her claim, Barbie Torres alleged physicians gave her a combination of morphine, hydromorphone and ketamine after she went to East Kootenay Regional Hospital (EKRH) for a flare-up of her Crohn's disease in 2021. 

The lawsuit said doctors didn't chart her doses properly or "legibly," which led to an overdose.

"[The] injuries have caused and continue to cause the plaintiff pain, suffering, discomfort [and] loss of enjoyment of life," reads the claim filed in B.C. Supreme Court this month.

The case outlines what would be another alleged instance of a medication error leading to dire consequences, which experts say can happen more frequently than patients might realize.

"It's definitely not a common event, but it's also not an unheard of event either," said Dr. Michael Curry, an emergency medicine physician and clinical associate professor at the University of British Columbia.

An analysis by the Institute for Safe Medication Practices Canada (ISMP) in 2020 examined more than 7,500 medication incidents that harmed a patient over the preceding five years.

Nearly 86 per cent of those incidents were reported as mild in severity. Just three per cent led to severe harm or death.

Through her lawyer, Torres declined to comment further as her case is ongoing. Her claims have not been proven in court and none of the defendants have filed a response to the lawsuit.

In an email to CBC News, Interior Health said it "cannot comment on matters before the court."

The claim said Torres was admitted to EKRH for vomiting and pain related to Crohn's on May 16, 2021. It said the first doctor prescribed her morphine and hydromorphone, known by the brand name Dilaudid, around 11:30 p.m.

The lawsuit said Torres then received 10 milligrams of morphone and four milligrams of Dilaudid over 12 hours.

After that, it said she was given another 20 milligrams of ketamine and another six milligrams of Dilaudid in the afternoon — a total of 40 milligrams of medication over 19 hours.

Morphine and hydromorphone are both opioids used to treat pain, though hydromorphone is considerably more potent. Ketamine is a disassociative anesthetic also used for pain management.