it is quite fair that we hear both sides of hte story. i'd like to hear from one of the doctors that helped her.

she shouldn't be flying with such poor health. she shouldn't have been on vacation away from her doctor. that was a bad decision on the patient's part. and moreso, if she was cleared for flying, she should have been equipped and prepared.

@pigeonpenelope:Yeah, the problem is when both sides tell vastly different stories. Truth lies somewhere in the middle I suppose.

Either way, its tragic, and even if you dont think she should have been flying, people would do well to remember that, instead of trying to blame the dead woman.

Unfortunately, we may not be able to hear from the doctors and nurses due to HIPAA. They would know whether or not there was oxygen in those tanks.

Let's hear the story of the doctor who pronounced her dead as he actually has a vested interest in the truth here.

So who's lying?

@statnut: i do agree with the vastly different stories. hearing from a third person--a doctor that helped her-- would help clear things up a bit.

it is tragic but the original story was aimed at getting to our emotions rather than using logic. it is sad she died as i would have much rather heard she was alive and doing better than dead. we do all have to remember we are accountable for our own selves. if we are in poor health, we should seek doc approval before flying.

@Meat_Shield: drat. you're quite right. would make a nice middle person though wouldn't it?

When the cousin's story came out, and I read that he complained that the "Box" (defibrilator) didn't work, I was sorta starting to question the story.

An AED doesn't help patients whos heart stops due to diabetes or even lack of oxygen. It's main purpose is to shock the heart back into rhythm after certain (deadly) arrhythmias of ventricular fibrillation and ventricular tachycardia.

So complaining about the AED not working on a patient who was probably having a heart attack, and not an arrhythmia, is like complaining that the leg cast didn't heal your broken wrist.

Anyway as stated before, I'm sure the truth lies somewhere in between, I feel bad for this lady but the story from AA sounds plausible too.

The oxygen tank was not empty... it was filled with nitrogen.

@pigeonpenelope: But at the same time, do you expect AA to say anything other than deny the truthiness of the original story?

I'm not a medical professional, so I'm curious to know why a defibrillator couldn't be used since the woman's heartbeat was "too weak to activate it" - isn't that what the entire purpose of a defib is? To jumpstart a non-beating/low-beating heart?

I hate to say this, and I'm not "blaming the victim" here, but I'm more apt to believe the airlines here. Yes, they have a lot to lose, and PR reps are spin doctors - but...I feel that reactions from a company representative may be a bit more lucid and grounded than a hysterical relative who just lost her cousin.

Sorry :(

@arch05: I wouldn't necessarily say that anybody is lying. Think about it a bit. A relative of yours is in distress so you start to panic and get a flight attendant to help out. Eventually they do help, and in the process attempt to give oxygen and use an AED to the woman. The man sees them try one oxygen bottle but it doesn't revive the woman. For whatever reason they try another bottle but it fails to revive her as well. Likewise, the AED doesn't revive her. During all this time there's probably a lot of commotion and confusion. The man is probably freaking out. Other flight attendants are probably trying to locate doctors/nurses among the passengers, and people near the woman are probably also freaking out a bit and/or trying to move out of the way. In a cramped isle it's going to be pretty close to pandemonium up there.

Flight attendants aren't doctors, and although they have some first aid training they can't be held to the level of trauma doctors, which is what you'd really want in a situation like this. I'm sure they tried really hard given the limited resources they have, but unless they do this sort of thing on a regular basis the only experience they probably have is a few hours practicing with a CPR mannequin.

The bottom line is there's likely to be a huge amount of finger pointing and variations on the stories from everybody on that plane, but I unless there was some serious negligence involved I doubt anybody would knowingly/willingly lie about it.

The airline and/or the flight attendants are only going to be liable if the tanks were actually empty. Flight attendants are not trained to give much beyond first aid, and everything reported sounds like they tried to offer Emergency Medical Treatment and asked for medical help.

The original article was written in such a way to arouse sympathy for the woman who was dying, and did not take into account the limitations of medical care on a flight. I am less inclined to trust that sort of reporting.

I also notice that the rebuttal is careful to discuss that medical professionals stepped in, something that was played down in the original article.

All that said, if those tanks were faulty or empty, the airline is going to get crucified.

After reading both of them, I'm taking AA's side, sounds more plausible to me.

@statnut: i'm quite certain AA made their side sound a bit better. i have never said their story was 100% accurate. i do believe there is some truth to both stories. that is why i have said twice now that i think a third party's pov would be appreciated.

@pinkbunnyslippers: AED's are designed to detect specific heart conditions like arrhythmia (abnormal electrical activity in the heart) fibrillation (the heart muscle and the ventricles get out of sync, resulting in blood not pumping properly), etc. If the womans heart was weakened due to an unrelated issue, such as a chemical imbalance due to her diabetes or a blood clot then an AED won't work. The AED is meant mainly for things like heart attacks.

WHERE IS THE DOCTOR & NURSE!!!!!! I want their sides of this story.

does anyone know why administering oxygen was detrimental in this case? at first when i read the other article i thought maybe the patient was asthmatic or needed oxygen because she didn't successfully produce her own. i know the functions of the heart and lungs but am confused as to how, in the case of her heart issue, how giving her oxygen may have saved her life. i sense she had an issue that only emergency surgery would have helped.

@IphtashuFitz: Not to split hairs, because you're mostly right (AED's are for fibrillations, especially ventricular) but "heart attacks" (or myocardial infarction) don't get much benefit from AED's either. An MI is where the blood flow to the heart is interrupted, usually because of a plaque rupture - a shock doesn't help here.

In fact this lady's symptoms sound like myocardial infarction, and an AED is of little use in that case.

Would you believe I learned all this from a CPR/AED course I took? :)

The AED only works on hearts (pumps) that have a level of function (say 5 out of 10). After you go below 5, the machine can't adjust your odd heartbeat.
If the passenger had severe diabetes and cardiac issues, it might be that nothing would save her. Even when a med pro knows you are dead they'll keep working on the hope that you get that one-per-billion chance of coming out alive.

@humphrmi: quite impressive. the only extra thing i took away from the cpr course i took was that the patient can puke in your mouth when you give cpr. quite disgusting really.

@statnut: If they'd screwed up as badly as was initially reported, I'd expect them to issue a curt "no comment at this time".

Instead, they congratulated the crew and affirmed the devices were working. I can assure you they'd keep their corporate mouths shut if they were not sure of being vindicated.

I wonder if this is a case, again, of lying through telling the truth?

"The airline said the oxygen tanks and a defibrillator were working..." -- but no mention if the O2 tank was working *and* had any remaining oxygen supply.

"...has determined that oxygen was administered on the aircraft..." -- But was it successfully administered?

"There were 12 oxygen tanks on the plane and the crew checked them before the flight took off to make sure they were working" -- Did they actually flow any air out of the tank? Because that would be how you would make _sure_ they were working.

"...and the equipment was working" -- But was it working PROPERLY?

Seriously. They denied everything without actually denying anything!

@IphtashuFitz: Thanks for the edumacation! :)

@CaliforniaCajun: But what are they basing it on? What the attendants told them?

What mantari said.

@mantari: good point. i'm still wondering how oxygen would have saved this woman's life?

does it really matter in this patient's case that the oxygen tanks were not working? since i have relatively no medical background, this still baffles me.

So it all boils down to who you want to believe. Personally, I am quite willing to believe that an airline trying to cut costs would certainly not fill O2 tanks- after all, who uses them anyway? The point is not really who killed the lady- that's another point. The point here is whether the airline is negligent in providing...
ahh, who cares anyway. Big corporations always choose profit over safety. And big corporations have the money to make stories like this disappear.

For $500:
"The flight attendant responded, 'OK, but we usually don't need to treat diabetes with oxygen, but let me check anyway and get back to you.'"
*
What is ... lousy lying flight attendant covers her ass?

This never would have happned if House was on the flight

@mantari: Just an educated guess here, but a more likely scenario, given that there were two doctors on board who helped the lady, is that they've been told by both doctors that she had a loss of blood flow to the heart caused by a plaque rupture, and no amount of oxygen or AED shocks would have helped her.

I'm betting that the whole issue goes away after she has an autopsy. Again, I feel bad for her, and her cousin who watched her die on an airplane, but some tragic loss-of-life events can't be prevented, even with a working tank of oxygen and an AED. It sounds like she had much better medical attention than most people would have on a flight (two doctors and a nurse, from what I read) and if two doctors couldn't save her, she probably was going to drop dead whether she was on an airplane or sitting on a beach in Haiti or sitting in her home in Brooklyn.

1. It has been covered that defibrillators are not the end all and be all of advanced cardiac care. Depending on her condition it might not have been any use at all.

2. As for the nurses/doctors who helped -- have you ever heard of a thing called HIPPA?

Hey Consumerist: Any response to the complaints (in the previous related post) about the irresponsibility of posting these one-sided stories, with inflammatory headlines ("Woman Dies On AA Flight After Being Refused Help, Then Given Empty Oxygen Tanks"), without at least trying to get a response from the company involved?

You can't have it both ways: You can't claim to be journalists crusading for the rights of consumers, but then run hiding when things blow up and say, "We're just a blog. We were just linking to someone else's one-sided story. We don't have to be fair."

If you want to maintain a certain level of credibility you do indeed have to be as fair as possible.

We'd be very interested in hearing your response.

@poodlepoodle: @Meat_Shield:
HIPAA would in no way constrain medical personnel from saying whether or not, in their professional opinion, the oxygen tanks were properly filled and functional. It would prevent them from saying publicly what the woman's condition was and what treatment they applied in her case.

@poodlepoodle: No, what is HIPPA?

Consumerist,
Usually I'm%

@humphrmi: If your hypothetical is true or not, American attempted to deny everything without denying anything of substance.

BTW: If they crew actually does check all 12 oxygen tanks before take-off (as American claims), and they do it by actually flowing air, doesn't that add to the probability of the tanks being empty when you need them?

@statnut: See the privacy rule described here: [en.wikipedia.org]

@statnut:

Ok...Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).

While this woman probably didn't show her insurance HIPAA generally gets thrown about for confidentiality reasons. What I'm trying to say is that these doctors can't tell you can't tell you anything about what they did for this woman.

@pinkbunnyslippers: I just went through my AED class at work and and they will ONLY, and a big ONLY, work on a very specific problem. The machiine will in fact perform a very quick diasgnostic on the patient and tell you that it won't shock. In fact it just tells you to keep on perfroming CPR. If she had congenital heart failure and diabetes its highly unlikely an AED would have been any help at all, thus her cousin's reaction.

@mantari: They probably don't check the tanks by actually bleeding air from them. They probably just check pressure gauges on them or some other visual indicator. The problem with opening up a valve that's under pressure is that it's way too easy to not get a good seal when closing it up again, thereby letting it bleed slowly until all the pressure is gone.

@rjhiggins: That's how a lot of the Gawker sites (and popular blogs like boingboing) run, unfortunately. Valleywag recently complained about not getting credit in the mainstream news for reporting on a story early, but the moment it turns out they reported something false, they're just a "gossip blog."

@IphtashuFitz: Good point. American only said that they "checked them before the flight took off to make sure they were working". Perhaps they checked them for the purpose of making sure that they were working, but that their check of a pressure gauge does not actually test the working status of the bottles.

@mantari: Also, "checked them before the flight" could mean anything from a take-off procedure, all the way to having been tested when the aircraft was first delivered to American. If you think I'm being too literal, that is exactly how you have to read PR non-denial denials to get at the truth.

@rjhiggins: I have a problem with this style of reporting/blogging as well.

To e fair, the Consumerist posted American's side to this story, but haven't changed this post to reflect that fact yet.

@rjhiggins: Bloggers ain't journalists... They just play one on the interweb.

@CaliforniaCajun: ??? confused as it clearly states that the article is AA's pov... what am i missing?

@CaliforniaCajun: Your getting your news all mixed up with your entertainment.

@pigeonpenelope: You're missing the original post; go back through Consumerist and you'll see it.

Which brings up another point, a problem with the blog format in general: If you run a separate item giving a more complete story, but leave the original, inflammatory post intact, there will be many links to the original story with no indication that there's been an update.