Final event
All children in this series collapsed and had resuscitation outside of the hospital. Although these deaths occurred in the hospital, all children had evidence of severe anoxic brain injury or brain death shortly after arrival to hospital.
On history, the final event was described as having an acute onset of symptoms (within 3 hours) in half of the subjects and chronic onset (within days) in the other half.
Post mortem examinations in two patients showed findings consistent with asthma including mucous plugging of small bronchioles, eosinophilic inflammation, basement membrane thickening, smooth muscle hypertrophy and goblet cell metaplasia regardless of whether the attack was acute or chronic onset.