NEED TO KNOW
- An Australian woman died in her bathroom from a caffeine overdose in April 2021
- Christina Lackmann, 32, called emergency services because she was feeling dizzy and numb, but it was seven hours before an ambulance arrived
- According to Australian outlet 9News, Coroner Catherine Fitzgerald said that the woman could have survived if she had been seen earlier by emergency services
An inquest has heard how a woman in Melbourne, Australia, died of a caffeine overdose in April 2021 after waiting seven hours for an ambulance.
According to 9News, Christina Lackmann, 32, died alone in her bathroom after calling emergency services due to feeling dizzy and numb.
News.com.au reported that the ambulance took seven hours to arrive after Lackmann made the initial call. “At 7:49 pm, Christina called 000 [the Australian emergency number] from her mobile phone and requested an ambulance. She reported to the call-taker (CT) that she felt sick, numb all over her body, and dizzy,” the coroner’s file stated.
She was deemed to be non-acute/nonurgent, which meant she was suitable for an “Ambulance Victoria Referral Service Triage Practitioner (RSTP), being a paramedic or nurse.” However, due to all available RSTPs being busy, a transfer call was unsuccessful.
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“An RSTP attempted to call Christina back 26 minutes after the 000 call was ended. The RSTP called three times, but there was no answer,” the statement notes. “At 8:17 pm, the RSTP sent a text message to Christina’s mobile advising that Ambulance Victoria was trying to call her. AV communications staff continued to attempt call-backs with some frequency, but there was no answer. In all, a total of 14 call-backs were attempted.”
A paramedic was also assigned to the biomedical sciences student on two occasions between 9:14 pm and 1:46 am; however, they diverted to higher-priority cases each time.
Ambulance services ended up arriving at Lackmann’s residence at 2:23 a.m. After being helped into the building by a neighbor and climbing onto the patient’s balcony from another neighbor’s, Lackmann was found deceased in her bathroom. Her dog was also found barking.
According to 9News, Coroner Catherine Fitzgerald said that the woman could have survived if she was seen earlier by emergency services. She also concluded that her initial call should have been transferred to a health practitioner.
While the patient hadn’t mentioned taking caffeine tablets, it was discovered that caffeine tablets had arrived at Lackmann’s apartment on the day she called emergency services. She was also found to have had an extremely high concentration of caffeine in her blood and stomach.
Per the court document, Associate Professor Narendra Gunja said Lackmann would have most likely received treatment earlier if she had been questioned about the medication she was taking on the call.
“This would likely have led to appropriate management with the use of antidote therapy and haemodialysis,” the file read. “If these management strategies were followed, Gunja considered it likely that Christina would have survived, even with a large caffeine overdose.”
The report added, “However, in the absence of information about the time Christina ingested the caffeine, or the length of time between ingestion and the making of the 000 call, Gunja was not able to pinpoint a specific time at which Christina’s death was still preventable.
PEOPLE has contacted Ambulance Victoria and Victoria Police for comment, but did not immediately hear back.
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