Amrita Lanka: Coroner finds eight-year-old girl’s death at Melbourne hospital was preventable

A coroner has been brought to tears as she found the death of an eight-year-old girl at one of Melbourne’s busiest hospitals was preventable.

Amrita Lanka was just eight years old when she died at the Monash Children’s Hospital in 2022.

WATCH THE VIDEO ABOVE: Girl’s preventable hospital death brings coroner to tears

For her parents, it has been years of anguish.

“They just left her to die,” Amrita’s father Chandra Sekhar said.

The cause of death was lymphocytic myocarditis, or inflammation of the heart muscle.

On Wednesday, Deputy State Coroner Paresa Spanos found it was preventable.

“While I accept (emergency departments) are busy places and Dr (Patrick) Tan was a relatively junior doctor with many responsibilities, the clinical management and care he provided to Amrita was wanting ... and thereby contributed to the death,” Paresa said.

Amrita had presented to the ED with nausea, vomiting and abdominal pain.

Doctors suspected gastroenteritis; inflammation of the stomach and small intestine.

At 3am, a new doctor reviewed Amrita. By then, her symptoms had worsened.

The registrar suspected myocarditis and further blood tests raised new concerns.

He thought they were “spurious” and he “did not think Amrita looked very unwell”, the coroner said.

Later, the young girl was moved into acute care where she suffered a brief cardiac arrest.

Before a proposed transfer to the Royal Children’s Hospital, she went into cardiac arrest again and could not be saved.

As the coroner read part of her mother’s impact statement, she was brought to tears.

She took a very long pause, needing to compose herself as she said Amrita was the most precious, talented, beautiful child.

Monash Health acknowledged the coroner’s findings and said it will “carefully consider them”.

It said that since Amrita’s death, it has since made changes.