Three children and one adult continue to receive intensive care at the Essen University Hospital for acute liver failure after eating death cap mushrooms. Two of the four patients have already been transplanted in the surgical clinic at the University Hospital in Essen, as the clinic announced in the afternoon. “The state of health remains critical in both cases.”
There is currently no reliable prognosis about the prospect of recovery. Two of the children are still waiting for a donor liver.
According to the spokeswoman, the children treated are between 5 and 15 years old. It is impossible to say where exactly they come from or whether they are boys or girls. For data protection reasons and to protect personal rights, there will be no further information about the patients’ health status. At the same time, the clinic once again pointed out the great dangers of the death cap mushroom. This is how you recognize the green death cap mushroom.
The father of one of the children was also being treated in Essen for liver failure, it was said. According to initial information from the clinic on Tuesday, two of the children are related. None of the children come from North Rhine-Westphalia. Two were brought to Essen from Saarland. The University Medical Center Essen is one of the few liver transplant centers in Germany.
Death cap is one of the most poisonous mushrooms
Distinguishing between edible and poisonous mushrooms is not easy. The death cap is considered one of the most poisonous mushrooms of all. And this highly poisonous representative looks very similar to the mushroom, said expert Markus Cornberg of the German Press Agency. The medical director of the German Liver Foundation warned against eating mushrooms you have collected yourself from the forest, saying the risk of poisoning is too high.
Cornberg warned: “Stay away from mushrooms from the forest.” Laypeople shouldn’t rely on apps either. “You should buy mushrooms in the supermarket.” Anyone who really wants to collect should only do so together with very experienced mushroom experts. “The death cap lurks everywhere.” How severe the poisoning is depends primarily on how much of the death cap you have eaten. However, how tall and heavy the person in question is can also play a role.
If you have any complaints, hurry up
The death cap toxin is absorbed through the gastrointestinal tract. If problems arise there, you should act quickly. Liver damage can be stopped if you intervene quickly with charcoal tablets, for example, and there is also an antidote, he explained. As an intensive measure in the event of impending liver failure, there is the possibility of washing the poison out of the body. According to the foundation, acute liver failure means that liver function completely collapses. Because this clinical picture is life-threatening, a liver transplant must be considered.
Cases of poisoning after mushroom consumption are not reported and there are no figures, said doctor and scientist Cornberg. In 2023, the foundation became aware of an increasing number of cases because it was wet very early in the year, which favored fungal growth. This year has also been very wet so far.
According to the Federal Institute for Risk Assessment, an average of ten mushroom poisonings are reported to doctors every year, and the federal states’ poison information centers answer more than 3,000 inquiries about mushrooms per year.
The BfR and the German Society for Child and Adolescent Medicine assume that the death cap is the cause of the majority of all fatal mushroom poisonings in Germany. In children, depending on their age and weight, consuming even a small amount of five to ten grams can be fatal.
According to information in the German Medical Journal in October 2020, a total of 4,412 inpatient treatments and 22 deaths were recorded in Germany between 2000 and 2018 due to the toxic effects of consumed mushrooms. 90 percent of fatal mushroom poisonings were therefore caused by the death cap mushroom.
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