Young boy died after having asthma attack
A 22-month-old boy died suddenly after suffering an asthma attack as his parents slept.
Sebastian Boyne was found by his mother when she awoke while having a bad dream just after 6am on April 5 this year, an inquest heard.
He had stopped breathing at his home in Richards Street, Wednesbury, and was taken to Walsall Manor Hospital.
Sebastian had previously used an inhaler on several occasions and seemed to be responding well to it, but mother Nicola told the inquest that they had been told by the hospital that they could not diagnose asthma at such an early age.
She said: "He was very strong, playful, very loving and very clever. He was a very very energetic lad, but it was just the weather – I used to stop him going out in the snow to stop him getting a cold."
Recalling the moment that she found her baby had stopped breathing, she added: "I was having a nightmare, that's what woke me up. He was facing me, I couldn't hear him breathing. I wish I hadn't gone to sleep."
His father Kristian said there had 'never been any problem with Sebastian'. He added: "He would run around and drop, and he would just get back up and do it again."
Pathologist Dr Tamas Marton, who conducted the post mortem on the boy, told the inquest that the main cause of his death was acute asthma with a possible cardiac abnormal or irregular heartbeat. Bronchial pneumonia was also observed.
He said: "The most significant finding was within the lungs, which were over-inflated with a deep inhalation. In my view Sebastian had a lung infection, superimposed to his asthma. It's known that terminal episodes can be very rapid."
Concluding that Sebastian died of natural causes, Black Country coroner Robin Balmain said: "It's very sad when someone very young dies of such an illness."
