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Hospital Beds Can Be a Dangerous Trap to Elderly, Sedated

Posted on: Tuesday, 14 March 2006, 06:01 CST

By Robert Davis

Federal health safety officials are sounding patient safety warnings for a medical device often considered harmless: the hospital bed.

But Food and Drug Administration officials -- citing hundreds of deaths of patients who have become trapped between the rails and the mattress -- say health care workers, family members and manufacturers need to do more to protect the elderly, frail and confused.

"These deaths are completely preventable," says John Demas, an attorney in Sacramento who is suing a nursing home for the death of Francis Flynn, 56, in 2004. She was one of at least 413 people who died from 1985 to 2006 after becoming wedged in a hospital bed. Demas says Flynn became stuck between a bedrail and a mattress.

The FDA's warnings, issued last week, provide "some guidance for the bed industry and the hospitals, nursing homes and long-term-care facilities," Demas says. "This puts it on their radar."

Brian Gregg, spokesman for hospital bed maker Hill-Rom, says the company helped the FDA create the guidelines and redesigned their beds in 2004 to make them safer.

"Somehow, for whatever reason, (patients) become lodged in different pockets around the bed where they can suffer strangulation," Gregg says.

The FDA received 691 entrapment reports from January 1, 1985 to January 1, 2006. In addition to the 413 deaths, 120 patients were injured. Most of the reports came from long-term-care facilities.

"The numbers reflect the tip of the iceberg," says Larry Kessler, director of FDA's Office of Science and Engineering Laboratories. Only a small percentage of bed entrapments are reported, he says.

Still, with roughly 1 million people in a hospital-type bed each day across the USA, entrapments are extremely rare, Kessler says. But the FDA wants patients, caregivers and family members to understand that the space between the rails, head or foot boards and the mattress can be risky to elderly or frail patients.

Younger, healthier patients can be at risk when they are sedated or when they have uncontrollable movements, the FDA says. Patients can become trapped when they slip between the mattress and the bed rail, as Lynn did, according to the lawsuit filed by her family.

Patients also have died when they become stuck between the rail and the head or foot board, the FDA says. When the head, neck or chest becomes trapped, the event can quickly turn fatal.

"These are very rare events, but when they do happen, they are very damaging," Kessler says.

The FDA's safety tips can be found at www.fda.gov/cdrh/beds. (c) Copyright 2005 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.

Source: USA TODAY

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