Ehime University Hospital said on Thursday that a nurse left a heart monitor alarm unanswered while an inpatient went into ventricular fibrillation, delaying resuscitation and leaving the patient with severe consciousness disorder, Kyodo News reported.
Ventricular fibrillation is a chaotic, rapid heartbeat that stops the heart from pumping blood. Brain damage can set in within minutes without CPR and defibrillation.
The hospital announced the medical accident itself. It said the nurse did not take appropriate action when the electrocardiogram monitor sounded.
Because resuscitation came late, the patient suffered severe impairment of consciousness. The hospital did not give the patient's age or condition beyond that.
Alarm fatigue on the ward
Monitors that sound frequent false or low-priority alarms are a known patient-safety problem in hospitals, because staff can come to tune them out. The case puts the staffing and response routines behind the monitors under scrutiny.
Ehime University Hospital is a national university hospital in Toon, Ehime Prefecture, on Shikoku. University hospitals in Japan take the most severe cases from their regions.