I’m more interested in why two epipens in a row still failed.

There was some suggestion that the epipens in question might not have had sufficiently long needles to deliver a fully intramuscular dose. This sounds odd, and I’ve not heard it since, but that might have reduced the efficacy of the dose enough to make a difference when combined with the delay to hospital and all the other things which may have gone wrong.

It doesn’t seem odd to me, stupid shit like this happens all the time in pharmaceutical and medical devices manufacturing. I’ve seen things maan, you don’t….you weren’t there….etc etc etc

One company I worked for OD’d a kid by packaging an incorrect strength anti epileptic in the wrong box.

Someone in QA and legal is in for a nice headache…

On the point above about ingredient lists in France, the allergen list is EU law so they should have it, unless they are in a loop hole like pret.  The buggeration is if your child has an allergen that is not on that list, it won’t be on the list the management produce so you have to ask for the actual product packaging and read the tiny print yourself.

I have been that parent on numerous occasions with staff generally rolling their eyes as I try to find out what really is in the food (pea fibre / flour / protein seems to be used as a bulking agent and can often appear in things like sausages, stuff labelled gluten free and veggie food)

You also get tuts and sighs from people waiting in the queue behind you, which makes me want to smack them.  They don’t seem to twig, they have a minor 10 minute inconvenience.  I have to do this every single time my son eats food away from the house, and I will have to do it for many many years.

Interesting comment about epipens failing, we only have 2.  1 we carry and 1 at nursery.  Going to buy some more when we can.

Are those treatments widely accepted in other countries

I haven’t looked into there use world wide but the treatment itself is very simple as it it consists in giving the patient minute doses of the allergen to begin with and effectively retraining their immune systems. There is a some info here http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/35rvMwHBlSvNkvqPgMx5xvW/is-there-a-cure-for-nut-allergies

I spend an awful lot of my life sitting in Investigator Meetings for clinical trials, any pharmaceutical company would be utterly delighted with a trial that returned an 80-90%  “cure”

Because a disturbing number of people die every year and a landmark court case may do something to address that maybe

I just looked this up on NICE, and they estimate 20 deaths per year from anaphylaxis in the UK. That’s 20 deaths too many, and a tragedy for everyone that is affected, but as a comparison, there are 4 or 5 deaths every day in road incidents.

BBC news is on permanently in my office, and I’ve been surprised how often the story has been broadcast.

Cannabis kills about 20 people a year, that is enough to get it banned, have Cressida Dick go on the warpath against the middle classes and have ridiculous amounts of police time and money thrown at combating it.

DT78 – seems surprising. We have to carry 2 at all times and the school have 2 as well. If one doesn’t work in 5mins, then we administer the 2nd.

Checked in with wifey we have 2 at home and 2 at nursery.  My mistake.  Initially we were only given 2 by the hospital.  Nursery told us we should have 2 pairs which she sorted (and apparently told me at the time!)

Deaths wise from what the consultant we spoke to said is they are seeing more kids with allergies, so without better awareness and controls it could get worse.  Comparing with roads isn’t like for like.  Those road deaths are too many but represent a smaller % due to the number of road journeys.  I’d also say virtually all allergy deaths could be avoided with the right controls which are relatively easy to implement.  To achieve the same on the road would be a massive investment / change something like cracking autonomous vehicles and banning human drivers

The law about allergies is an EU one …

It may surprise you has the UK actually enforces the EU laws somewhat better than other members.  So yes, there should be info in French / Italian/ Spanish sandwich shops …

Interestingly I was in Germany last week, and in a bakery … no signs.  And in Austria two weeks before … no signs.

The reason why everyone tuts when you are trying to assess the state of the sandwich is:-

1) They think it is yet another needy faux “allergy”.  And based in the fact that 40% are, they have reason to believe that it might beg the case.  The pretenders have queered the pitch for you.

2) Or, wow , if it is that extreme, wouldn’t it be easier to have brought something with you? If food out of the home is such a risk, do you not think they have a point?

And I am not dissing your issue… but, unfortunately, it is your issue and not everyone else in the shop.

As stated epipens etc are not 100% certain.  You also have no idea if anyone on the plane is eating, say sesame,  or is a sesame farmer, or has sesame in their bags.  On the basis of my regular plane travel, less than 40 of men wash their hands after taking a dump … go figure on what touch contamination  must be like in planes ….

Mrmoofu tbh you are coming across like a bit of a dick.  Do you tut when a blind person holds you up a bit or maybe someone in a wheelchair needs help for access?  Should they stay at home and not inconvenience you in your more important life?  So kids with allergies should never eat food from a cafe or restaurant because checking the ingredients (which should be clear) delays you getting your sarnie?

All that is needed is to bloody label the food correctly and awareness, and it would seem some tolerance from people in the lucky position of not having to deal with this shit.  It’s not hard.

DT78 – it is better than actually being one, as in your case, if we are down to calling each other names.  I love people who make pompous assumptions .

I have already given you context … and you chose not to understand it.  It was NOT a statement of my opinions in any way whatsoever.

I work in the food industry and I am dealing with the need regarding food allergies every day …

I see it more as the family trying to make sure this doesn’t happen again

I will guarantee you it will happen again. You just won’t necessarily hear about it unless the family concerned are middle class (and the BBC demographic), and the victim is reasonably photogenic, or is a child.

Couple of other points, especially for those with allergies:

there is a nationwide shortage of epipens. There are no children’s ones available. They say you can use up to 4 months after expiry date (talk about desperation). This I think is due in part to the pharmacy company buying the rights then upping the price massively. ****. In adults they are hard to get hold of and have a short expiry time. So if they are expiring order now and expect a delay in getting one (maybe months).

if you inject into one thigh you need to inject the second into another limb as you get local blood vessel construction. This happened in this case. But if you are in shock you won’t get any absorption anyway so need intravenous adrenaline so need to use the second early.

Epipens were designed to give the army stuff in Iraq to treat chemical weapons so the needles are designed for thin men, not women who have more fat. So the needles are too short. Get an Emerade instead which has a longer needle and longer shelf life. Why the **** did no one tell us this??? Anaphylaxis campaign and the MHRA should have acted years ago on this.

In this case the plane couldn’t divert as the destination was the quickest airport. The AED would be useless in her case but the training that you only put it on when they stop breathing is utter bollcks. Suspect this is because the pads you use have a cost which the airline doesn’t want to pay (why I worked in an A&E where we still used those dodgy paddle things because they were too stingey to do things properly).  However their suction was also not working which is also utter bollcks. They should be strung up as this may have helped and suction is probably more useful than any other basic device. This should have been checked and resolved before take off.

Finally, you might criticise her for buying a dodgy sandwich. How many times did she eat an avoid a problem? Millions. You can’t just stay at home and never go out. Life is a balance of risks. I think you also have to distinguish between an ingredient which is a core part of the meal (eg if it were a sesame seed sandwich you can know to avoid it and fair enough, some people like sesame seeds) and one which is hidden (and usually a pointless addition to the meal and also high risk of missing it). If she’d asked, who is to say they staff would have known? I suspect the dough was made offsite so they wouldn’t have prepared it themselves. Also if they hard warnings on other food, you could be reassured by the absence on this sandwich.

Epipens were designed to give the army stuff in Iraq to treat chemical weapons so the needles are designed for thin men, not women who have more fat. So the needles are too short. Get an Emerade instead which has a longer needle and longer shelf life. Why the **** did no one tell us this??? Anaphylaxis campaign and the MHRA should have acted years ago on this.

……wow

Heads should be rolling over at the MHRA!

As they should be at the airline as well. I suspect this is something that needs legislative response from government to get people to do maintain equipment properly and do their **** jobs.

evh22 – thank you for the detailed commentary.  Was Nice really the closest airport (I haven’t looked at the details) I thought she started becoming unwell 20 minutes into the flight.  Now it may be family didn’t alert the crew, or the crew (or even the family) were initially unaware of the severity?  I think the other thing about “the sandwich” which we don’t know – is was she a regular Pret user, has she had the same filling in a similar looking sandwich before – had the recipe changed – certainly that is the most common thing to catch out me wife/son/FIL – when someone changes the ingredients without warning?

And I am not dissing your issue… but, unfortunately, it is your issue and not everyone else in the shop

And this is why society is shit at dealing with this – even people “in the industry” think its the individual consumers’ problem not either the industry or society as a whole.  Even if 40% of people (seems like an exaggeration) are not life threatening allergy sufferers – if they don’t want to eat something for health, religious, social, or even internet fad reasons thats their choice.

I could post some fairly graphic photos of a 2 year old not in a good way which might explain why I’m a bit opinionated on this subject.

I must say our nursery and the nhs have been amazing in diagnosing and support.  I wasn’t aware of the stuff around the epipen (thankful we have only had cause to use it once)

And for the most part most staff we ask for ingredient lists are very accomodating.  But I would much rather every menu had an appendix with the detailed ingredients so we could check before hand.  As it is we do often take our own food and only eat in what we think are allergy friendly / child friendly places.  We havent been abroad on holiday for fear of this sort of thing happening away from the nhs.

…but the training that you only put it on when they stop breathing is utter bollcks.

Could you explain this a bit more as at work we told to only put them on if the patient isn’t breathing as they wont work if the heart is beating

They are already using the station to incessantly promote their own programmes (Bodyguard – which was mentioned in just about every show going), GBBO (when they had it), and now Celebrity Come Dancing …

Wow, public broadcaster promotes its own output shock horror probe!

Wake up at the back and pay attention – the Beeb has always done this! Why wouldn’t the Beeb promote its own shows, they want people to watch the stuff after all! They aren’t advertising commercial products they’re advertising the TV shows that they themselves show – why are you finding this to be a problem?

CZ – yes they have always done it.

With Bodyguard it was unrelenting ….it’s about quantity and quality.

kilo- If your patient is clearly losing consciousness and you have good reason to suspect that their heart may stop soon, I’d fit the pads earlier rather than later, simply to shorten your overall response time.

I have unpacked an AED unit and got airways, O2 etc ready on several of occasions but have not fitted pads to a ‘live & aware’ patient. It’s not something I’d do lightly and have yet to fit a set early, as it scares the c**p out of anyone present, including the patient themselves if they are at all awake.  Plus the machine will run through its checking procedure including voice prompts, which are often quite loud and add to tension.

Can see the logic in that, I think our first aid levels are so low (try and keep them in with a vague shout until a professional turns up) the instructors don’t expect us to be that proactive ! And one would have to actually find a defibrillator as well.

Kilo, you got it a little mixed up i think.

They will not do anything if there is a normal heart rhytme but also not do anything if there is none at all.