Drug may have led to Andy Warhol’s death

Press, 13 April 1987, Page 8

Drug may have led to Andy Warhol’s death

NZPA-Reuter New York The pop artist, Andy Warhol, was given an antibiotic to which he may have been allergic before he died in a New York hospital, says a state Health Department spokesman. A departmental investigation sharply criticised the care that Warhol, aged 58, received in New York Hospital, where he died of cardiac arrest on February 22 a day after gall bladder surgery. The investigation found Warhol was given Cefoxitin, which can cause allergic reactions similar to those of penicillin. The spokesman, Wayne Osten, said Warhol was allergic to penicillin and that the antibiotic could cause cardiac arrest if the allergy was severe enough.

Mr Osten said two hospital doctors who questioned Warhol on admission apparently did not ask if he was allergic to penicillin, and reported he did not have any drug allergies. But before undergoing the gall bladder operation, Warhol told the operating theatre nurse and the anaesthetist that he was allergic to penicillin, Mr Osten said.

Nevertheless, Warhol was given Cefoxitin in an intravenous solution after surgery.

Other problems cited in the report included failure to record his hospital chart properly, allowing too much fluid to build up in his body, and failure to supervise a private nurse caring for him. Mr Osten said the nurse may have been asleep in the hours

before Warhol’s death. Mr Osten said departmental investigators had been unable to determine whether that and other problems they had uncovered had contributed to Warhol’s death. “We don’t know the answer to that now,” he said. “We are not saying any of the specific deficiencies caused his death but they are serious deficiencies.”

The department entered the Warhol case because the hospital failed to report his sudden and unexpected death, as the state health code requires. That failure was among 15 citations in a report presented to the hospital. It concluded: “The proper quality of medical care was not maintained in this case.”