The hospital’s intensive care unit saves a teenager’s life
Experienced doctors often recognize from a certain intuition when a person’s life is in danger. The sixteen-year-old was brought to our hospital from another health center with a request for a head CT. He was barely responsive and lay completely powerless on the stretcher. However, examinations of the brain did not reveal any internal bleeding, as had been feared. It was the laboratory tests that shed light on the matter. They also led to the immediate transfer of the young patient to our intensive care unit. He was suffering from newly diagnosed diabetes mellitus. The metabolism was completely over-acidified. PH: 6.9 (normal: 7.4)
It was to take over a day before the therapeutic measures brought the patient out of his extremely critical phase. Emergency physician Dr. Benjamin Zeier and paediatrician Dr. Oliver O’Neill spent anxious hours at the intensive care bedside with the intensive care team. With success! Now the teenager has been saved. It is not nice to have to live with such a chronic diagnosis as “diabetes”. But it is a reason to be grateful if you are allowed to live. And that is exactly the case here.
