A man died after being injected with the wrong drug while being treated in hospital after crashing his van into a sea wall, an inquest heard.

Arnold Harper, 56, was airlifted to the Royal Preston Hospital in November 2013, having sustained non-life threatening injuries when his van crashed into a sea wall in Cumbria.

But registrar Dr Pieter DuPreez administered the wrong drug by mistake, an inquest at Preston Crown Court heard.

He pressed a button ‘several’ times, automatically administering a high dose of adrenalin which sent Mr Harper’s heart rate rocketing – and he died of a cardiac arrest shortly after.




In a statement to the inquest in front of Mr Harper’s family, Dr DuPreez said: ‘I am terribly sorry, I made a mistake.

‘Whether that had any impact or not I don’t know. But, regardless, I am sorry for your loss.’

Mr Harper was flown to hospital after the crash and had broken his right leg, breastbone, collar bone and fractured three vertebrae.

And while he had been drifting in and out of consciousness, experts claimed that his injuries were not life threatening.

The man was automatically injected with a clicker device

Consultant orthopaedic surgeon Manoj Khatri, who performed a five and a half hour on Mr Harper, said: ‘The only significant injuries were fractures. I would not have expected him to die in the next 24 or 48 hours because of those injuries.’

Dr DuPreez accidentally administered the adrenaline after mistakenly believing that it was Alfentanil, a powerful sedative.

‘I looked at the syringe pumps and I went for the syringe which I felt was Alfentanil,’ he said.

‘I can’t remember exactly why at the time I decided that was it. Alfentanil has a sky blue label and Noradrenaline is purple.

‘It all happened quite quickly. He needed sedative quickly, I reached for what I thought was Alfentanil.’

The inquest continues.