The Seattle Children’s Hospital in Washington is faced with a negligence lawsuit after an infant developed a hospital-acquired mold infection post-surgery. The infant’s parents made the court filings on Tuesday, April 14.

The lawsuit accused the hospital of negligence, which left their son’s heart with a mold infection. According to the court papers, the infant, who was born with a heart condition, underwent open-heart surgery at the hospital on October 1, 2019.

A month after the surgery, the infant came down with nosocomial mold infection, which has left him battling for his life at the hospital to date.

The lawsuit stated that the hospital had a record of a sporadic mold outbreak, with at least seven mold infection-related deaths reported in the last decade. The suit, filed by the plaintiff, Hayley Seymour, follows a series of previous legal actions taken against the hospital regarding the mold since 2005.

The suit alleged that the hospital failed to inform the unsuspecting family of its mold history prior to the surgery. Seymour said they would never have conducted the procedure at Seattle Children’s otherwise.

Investigations by the State Department of Health showed that the hospital’s air monitoring system went beyond legal requirements, yet, did not detect molds in the operating rooms several weeks after the baby’s surgery.

By November, after confirming the mold infection in the child’s surgical site, the department took air samples from the ORs, which tested positive to the presence of mold.

It was gathered that the children’s hospital had previously put several precautions in place to prevent the spread, including limiting high-risk surgeries to ORs with high-efficiency particulate air filters.

However, by September last year, the hospital withdrew the restrictions, citing space, staffing considerations and negative air samples as reasons. Hence, Seymor son’s ORs lacked a HEPA filter.

Following the November investigations, however, the facility has since closed its ORs.

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The articles published contain sensitive subject matter that may be hard to read by some. We understand that losing a loved one is hard and devastating. Accident News’s decision to share the stories is to help others who may be facing the same situations by providing appropriate resources to the general public.

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