Family rejects coroner’s newborn death finding
A family whose daughter died from an undiagnosed heart condition just hours after her birth have rejected a coroner’s finding that the baby’s death was not preventable.
Thea Flaskett died on the morning of September 11, 2023, just over four hours after being born in a Queensland hospital.
The inquest was told the newborn baby suffered from a congenital defect called translocation of the great arteries, which affects blood flow through the heart.
Thea’s mother, Meg Flaskett, had a routine morphology scan at the 20th week of her pregnancy in May 2023, and no heart defects were detected.
“The weight of the evidence supports a finding that Thea’s death was not preventable, that the displacement of the major arteries was not detected (before birth),” Assistant Queensland State Prosecutor Stephanie Gallagher said in her findings on Tuesday. he said.
Ms Gallagher found that regardless of the quality of the scans, Thea’s heart defect was “not an unusual occurrence” to be missed during pregnancy.
Thea’s parents, Meg and James Flaskett, had fought for an inquest into their daughter’s death and hearings were held in Brisbane in 2025.
In a statement criticizing the findings of the investigation, Ms Flaskett said the family was “devastated but not surprised by the outcome”.
“Had Thea’s condition been diagnosed before birth, her labor, delivery and emergency treatment would have been fundamentally different,” he said.
He disputed that the heart defect was the only significant thing that contributed to Thea’s death at Redcliffe Hospital, north of Brisbane.
“Although these findings bring the judicial process to an end, they do not bring us peace and do not answer the questions that have driven us for almost three years.” he said.
Queensland Health’s supervising sonographer, Craig John Collins, testified at the inquest that he performed about 150 ultrasounds a year and had only discovered one case of transposition on a scan.
“Ideally, Thea (heart defect) should have been suspected during Ms Flaskett’s morphology scan and diagnosed by a maternal-fetal medicine specialist or pediatric cardiologist shortly afterwards,” Ms Gallagher said in her findings.
Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital senior staff neonatologist Pieter Koorts said Thea’s survival was “not guaranteed” if her heart defect was detected and she was born in a major city hospital and underwent emergency surgery.
Ms Gallagher said Redcliffe hospital staff were doing the best they could with the resources they had.
“Despite resuscitating Thea to a high standard, her outcome was determined by the underlying congenital heart abnormality and not the standard of her postnatal care,” Ms Gallagher said.
Ms Gallagher suggested Metro North Health consider adopting bedside live streaming services and neonatal retrieval processes used in NSW.
