Christ Hospital and Medical Center is reviewing the care administered to a 64-year-old Alsip man who died Sunday, hours after being treated for injuries he received in a car accident and released, a hospital spokesman said Tuesday.
Christopher LaPorte, of the 3900 block of West 123rd Street in Alsip, was taken to Christ Hospital about 12:30 a.m. Sunday with blunt trauma to the chest after he was involved in an auto accident, said hospital spokesman Charles Simpson.
LaPorte was at the hospital for observation for seven hours before he was released at 7:30 a.m., Simpson said.
A number of diagnostic tests were performed and “upon discharge there was no condition evident that required further hospital care,” Simpson said.
He returned to the hospital at 3:45 p.m. complaining of chest pain. He died a little more than an hour later at the hospital, a spokesman for the Cook County medical examiner’s office said.
An autopsy determined the cause of death to be cardiac lacerations and cardiac tamponade, which is the squeezing of the heart by blood or liquid.