Ten years ago, Lenore Alexander’s healthy, 11-year-old daughter, Leah Coufal, underwent elective surgery to correct pectus carinatum at a prestigious Southern California hospital.
Though the surgery went well, Lenore awoke at 2 a.m. on the second post-operative night to find Leah “dead in bed,” a victim of undetected respiratory arrest, caused by the narcotics that were intended to ease her pain. If Leah had been monitored continuously after the surgery, staff would have been alerted and Leah would probably have been rescued. But ten years later, knowing that the standard of care remains unchanged, Lenore works to make continuous postoperative monitoring the law (Leah’s Law) to help prevent other children suffering the same fate as Leah.
Visit http://leahslegacy.org/ to learn more.