Mother dies in London hospital after having son by emergency C-section

A French woman died in a London hospital after her baby son was delivered in an emergency caesarean operation, an inquest heard.

Estelle Deleplanque, 30, a pharmacist, was seven months’ pregnant and suffering from a form of pre-eclampsia known as Hellp Syndrome, West London coroner’s court was told.

Doctors at Hillingdon hospital found she had “dangerously low” levels of platelets, which help the blood to clot, after she was rushed in by ambulance on January 1, 2015, during a New Year visit to relatives in London. The normal level is between 150-400 million per millilitre of blood but she had only 44. She died three hours after her son Hector, now two, was delivered.

The inquest heard that the hospital was running out of emergency supplies of platelets because of the New Year holidays. Anaesthetist Dr Emma Caseley said she was worried Ms Deleplanque might have a life-threatening bleed during the caesarean and told a laboratory technician to obtain more plateletsfrom a blood bank. But she added that Ms Deleplanque “had enough platelets at the end.”

Ms Deleplanque was said to have thought doctors were “over- reacting” when they told her she was seriously ill and begged them to let her go home. Dr Caseley said: “I wanted her to understand that we were not making a fuss for no reason.” The inquest continues.