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Esmin Green, 49, had been involuntarily committed to Brooklyn's Kings County Hospital on June 18tth, suffering from
“agitation and psychosis.” She waited in the crowded psychiatric emergency room until the next morning, where she collapsed in her chair and slid to the floor, convulsing. An hour later, she was dead.
On Friday, the Medical Examiner’s office concluded that the cause of Green’s death had been pulmonary thromboemboli. This condition, primarily caused by sitting for long periods of time, causes blood clots to form in the person’s legs. These clots then travel to the lungs, killing the patient.
That Green was killed by this condition is significant, says Sanford Rubenstein, the Green family’s attorney.
As reported by the
Associated Press, Rubenstein said that:
The length of time that she spent in the emergency room…very well may have contributed to her death…Physical inactivity was obviously a significant contributing factor.
The Medical Examiner’s findings are likely to spark a new round of controversy for the Brooklyn, New York Hospital.
For the past few weeks, Kings County Hospital has been under attack for not only letting a physically healthy woman (she had not been admitted for a physical problem) die in their emergency room, but for ignoring her as she writhed on the floor for about 30 minutes. Then, after she stopped moving, another 30 minutes passed before a nurse walked over to her, nudged her with her foot, and determined that she was dead.
Security cameras recorded the entire scene and the existence of this video is making it difficult for the hospital to justify its actions…or rather, its inactions.