Gardai have begun an investigation into the death last month of a nine-year-old girl three weeks after she had her appendix removed at Cavan General Hospital.
News of the Garda inquiry emerged at the opening of the inquest into the death of the nine-year-old, Frances Sheridan from Cootehill.
She died on February 1st, three weeks after her operation and 36 hours after she had returned to the hospital's A&E unit complaining of stomach pains and had been sent home.
Hospital staff said she probably only had a tummy bug. A post mortem was carried out by the State pathologist Dr Marie Cassidy and her findings were read out at the inquest in Cavan courthouse yesterday by the coroner for Cavan Mr Paul Kelly.
Dr Cassidy found the child had died from complications of recent surgery. Essentially her report said the child's bowel became obstructed by adhesions which grew around the site of the surgery wound.
There was nothing unusual, she found, about such adhesions. They were, her report stated, part of the normal healing process.
She reported that when such an obstruction occurred a patient would present with abdominal pain and vomiting.
As a result of the obstruction to her bowel Frances Sheridan ended up inhaling her own vomit and died, Dr Cassidy concluded.
Mr Kelly told those present for the inquest, which was adjourned after the medical cause of death was put on the public record, that losing a child was every parents nightmare and "really that is what has befallen the Sheridan family".
He said the past number of weeks had been "a huge ordeal" for them, particularly coming to terms with their loss in the full glare of the media.
The inquest has been adjourned to May.