Le Figaro Nice
Headaches, sweats, ants in the right arm, facial paralysis, speech difficulties: symptoms likely to worry, if not to alarm.
Not for one of the Nice Samu regulators obviously, who, in this case, hastily concluded that there was a trivial angina while the victim - yet a doctor himself - was having a stroke.
The facts date back to September 19.
That day, Anthony, a 40-year-old psychiatrist, begins his first day in the Saint-Jérôme service at the Sainte-Marie psychiatric hospital in Nice.
It's a day
"like any other"
for the forties, as he himself tells
Le Figaro
.
It is 7 p.m. when he returns to his apartment.
Anthony is then alone at home, his girlfriend being 250 kilometers away, in Arles.
“I got ready to eat, everything was fine, but at the end of the meal I realized that I could no longer swallow the food”
, he recalls.
Quickly, other symptoms appear.
First there are sweats, a violent headache and a feeling of malaise.
Cartesian and not the type to be unnecessarily alarmed, Anthony thinks first of a vagal discomfort.
The latter, who is still far from making the link with a stroke, also refuses to prevent emergencies.
But now, thirty minutes pass and the situation worsens.
“I was getting less and less able to swallow and swallow, I had to spit in the sink so as not to choke on my saliva”
.
At 9 p.m., the psychiatrist finally decides to contact the 15th. Problem, Anthony expresses himself with difficulty and struggles to answer the questions of the medical regulation assistant on the phone.
"He was cold, hard and quite arrogant with me because I expressed myself very badly
," he recalls.
At the end of this first exchange, the regulator invites him to find help from a neighbour.
“Monsieur will take his medication tomorrow morning”
A little stunned, Anthony runs.
He leaves his apartment and meets a neighbor.
"I handed her my phone on which I had written my symptoms, she was a little scared at first but she called the Samu in turn"
.
The young woman then falls on the same dispatcher who, this time, transfers the call to a doctor.
Quickly, the latter concludes that he has angina and refuses to send an ambulance.
“SOS doctor will pass during the night”
, we answer him.
Unable to express it, Anthony is nevertheless certain: it is not angina.
"It's not that brutal!"
After this second call, the forty-year-old remains for a moment on the stairs of his building, accompanied by his neighbor.
He also decides to warn his girlfriend, whom he had chosen not to worry until then.
The latter does not take long to contact the emergency services in turn.
“She said I was a doctor and something serious was going on.
He was told that a doctor had spoken to me and that there was nothing to worry about.
He was told by text: "Monsieur will take his medication tomorrow morning"
, testifies Anthony again.
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In desperation, the neighbor tries to rely on the firefighters.
But the welcome is not warmer.
"It's not us who should be called madam, it's the Samu.
And it is not because they refuse to move that you have to contact us.
Are you going to call EDF now?
, he would have been answered cynically, according to Anthony, who says he had
“pain for her”.
Helpless, the psychiatrist comes to doubt the seriousness of what is happening to him.
"I thought maybe it wasn't that bad and went home to wait for the doctor."
At home, Anthony crosses his reflection in a mirror and notices a facial paralysis, with a lowering of one side of the lip.
A tingling sensation follows in the right arm.
This time, there is no longer any doubt: he is the victim of a stroke.
Four days in intensive care
Panicked, he rushes into the street looking for someone to call the Samu, again.
A passer-by renders him this service.
Unsurprisingly, on the other end of the line, the story is the same:
"It's angina!"
The good Samaritan did not however omit to specify to the regulator the new symptoms of Anthony, even using the word "CVA", in vain.
Finally, a little before 11 p.m., the doctor called on the services of a VTC driver who came to meet him in a few minutes and drove him to the hospital.
“It is 11:03 p.m. when I am registered at the emergency reception.
The on-call neurologist arrives immediately.
The thrombolysis alert is launched.
I have an emergency MRI showing ischemia (decreased arterial blood supply to an organ, editor's note) in the left vertebral artery probably due to dissection of the artery.
Thrombolysis is performed around midnight.
»
“
Such doctors are incompetent and totally unconscious.
How can angina be diagnosed with the presentation of symptoms of a stroke?
I wish no more such errors occur.
Everyone should be able to rely on first aid with confidence.
»
Anthony, stroke victim
Anthony spends four days in intensive neurovascular care, fed by a nasogastric tube.
He was then transferred on September 23 to the neurovascular service.
The probe is then removed and he receives speech therapy.
Despite this, slurred speech, like facial paralysis, persisted for many weeks.
"I am a psychiatrist and speaking is very important in my profession"
, he underlines.
“I am extremely disappointed with the reaction of the emergency services and the doctor despite our multiple alerts.
There were five calls in total from five different people between 9:04 p.m. and 10:30 p.m.
If I didn't know the symptoms of a stroke, I would have waited all night for a doctor at my house who couldn't have done anything when he arrived,
.
Such doctors are incompetent and totally unaware.
How can angina be diagnosed with the presentation of symptoms of a stroke?
I wish no more such errors occur.
Everyone must be able to rely on first aid with complete confidence.”
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Anthony also believes he was lucky and says he is relieved to have got away with it so easily.
“I know the damage that a stroke can cause,”
he remarks, while ensuring that he does not blame
“personally anyone”
, but rather the
“system”
of first aid.
“Next time I will call an Uber rather than the Samu to get to the hospital,”
he concludes, with a touch of irony.
“
Telephone medical regulation is not infallible
”
Pierre-Marie Tardieux, head of the emergency department
Contacted by
Le Figaro
, the emergency department of the Nice University Hospital regrets a situation "
which made the whole department sad".
“He is first of all a colleague, he worked in the emergency room with us a few years ago, it is all the more regrettable from this point of view,
remarks Doctor Pierre-Marie Tardieux, head of the emergency room.
What is true is that telephone medical regulation is not infallible, it would be unrealistic to tell you otherwise.
Without trying to minimize the error committed or to excuse anyone, the latter reminds us that the dispatcher assistants must manage
“1,500 daily calls on average.
In this specific case, there were difficulties of understanding on both sides.
“And to point out that the Samu has a target of responding to all calls
“in less than 80 seconds, which is very complicated.”
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In any case, the emergency management claims to have learned the lessons of this story in order to prevent it from repeating itself in the future.
“We must not believe that we take the problems above the leg and that we do not care.
We question ourselves and we improve”
, certifies Pierre-Marie Tardieux.
To respond to these thousands of calls, 4 regulating physicians take turns today on a permanent basis.
At the request of management, the Regional Health Agency (ARS) granted him a fifth doctor to swell the ranks during the holiday season.
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