Tragic schoolgirl, 5, who collapsed and died in playground could have survived if ‘gross failure’ paramedic had used a defibrillator

A TRAGIC five-year-old who died of a heart attack after collapsing in school could have been saved if a paramedic had used a defibrillator, an inquest heard.

A "serious mistake" was made while Lilly May Page-Bowden was being treated but the paramedic claimed she was not taught to use the equipment in circumstances such as the youngster's collapse.

The inquest had to be adjourned while the coroner asks for evidence from the medic's university where she received her training.

Lilly May died on May 15, 2014, shortly after her heart stopped beating as her mum Claire Page collected her from Willow Bank Infant School in Woodley, Berkshire, with her grandmother.

The five-year-old told her mum : “Look how fast I can run”, before speeding away from her during pick-up time.

Heartbroken Ms Page recalled seeing her daughter racing a friend across the playground before disappearing into a crowd - and the next time she saw her, the little girl was lying flat on her back with her eyes rolling back in her head.

In a statement read by the coroner, she said: "Lilly May was pleased and excited that her grandma was there to collect her from school. She said, 'Look how fast I can run' and sprinted off across the playground out of sight. As soon as I saw her I shouted, 'Oh my God, Lilly May.'

"She was lying flat on her back with her arms by her sides."

After her death it was established Lilly May suffered from Sudden Arrhythmic Death Syndrome (SADS).

Giving evidence at the inquest, paramedic Shannon Jacobs who was first on the scene after Lilly May's collapse, said she decided not to use shocks on the child as she believed they could make her condition worse - but was later told by an A&E consultant that the print-out from the defibrillator showed shocks should have been used.

The young paramedic had not faced a situation with a child collapsing due to cardiac arrest before.

Ms Jacobs said: "When the pads were attached I recall that Lilly May was initially in fine ventricullar fibrillation (VF). The concern was that if we used shocks to Lilly May's heart it would change. I was taught that this was not a shockable rhythm."

Reading Coroner's Court heard that a serious mistake was made in the decision not to use a defibrillator to try to revive the five-year-old.

Air ambulance physician Dr Marietje Slabbert eventually took over treatment of Lilly May but also decided not to use a defibrillator.

Michael Jackson, a consultant paramedic who prepared a report into the incident as an independent specialist, said Lilly May's heart was clearly in a VF rhythm.

He added he would be "very surprised" if the training given at Oxford Brookes University, where Ms Jacobs studied, saw students taught not to give shocks in the event of a VF rhythm as this is in national guidelines.

Consultant paediatrician Dr Edmund Ladusans said in his view Lilly May could have been saved if a defibrillator was used as soon as paramedics arrived.

"She had perfectly normal cardiac structure and function and I think the balance of probabilities are that if she had been defibrillated when that first cardiac aversion was seen then she would have survived," he said.

Senior Coroner for Berkshire, Peter Bedford, decided to adjourn the inquest so that an expert from Oxford Brookes University could be called to give evidence on the content of its two-year training course for paramedics.

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