Luchii Gavrilescu: East Kent Hospital 'missed opportunity' to stop baby's death

Luchii Gavrilescu was 48 days old when he died

A baby's death could have been prevented if doctors had not missed signs of tuberculosis in his father two years earlier, a review has found.

Luchii Gavrilescu died at a hospital in Margate, Kent, in December 2019 after being mistakenly diagnosed with a common chest infection.

A post-mortem test discovered he died of TB. Tests found he had caught the bacterial infection from his father.

Signs of the infection in his father were missed in a chest X-ray in 2018.

"Luchii's death and transmission of infection to others could have been prevented" if his father's TB had been detected and treated earlier, an internal report by East Kent Hospitals said.

A review of the 2018 X-ray found a "missed opportunity" to diagnose the disease.

The trust said it was "truly sorry that mistakes were made in [Luchii's] care".

Laura Cooke said an apology would not bring her son back

His mother, Laura Cooke, said "every day is a struggle to get through" since her son's death.

"No apology, no liability, will ever bring Luchii back," she said.

Ms Cooke said she wanted to make sure "this never ever happens to another family ever again".

The six-week-old was taken to A&E at the Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother hospital on 29 November and again on 3 December, but was discharged after being diagnosed with bronchiolitis.

'Lack of recognition'

They returned to hospital again on 6 December after Luchii went "floppy and pale," and he was then wrongly diagnosed with sepsis. He died later that day.

An investigation by the trust said doctors should have considered keeping Luchii in hospital on his second visit.

He should also have been seen earlier by senior doctors on his third visit, the review found.

There was a "lack of recognition of severity of Luchii's condition" four hours after he arrived at hospital for the final time, a report said.

However, it said treatment "would still have been challenging even if Luchii had been admitted on the first or second attendance," due to the nature of his illness.

"We would like to reiterate our heartfelt condolences to [Luchii's family] on their devastating loss," a spokesperson for the trust said.