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Eric Hanans dropped to his knees and screamed when he arrived in the emergency department at Norfolk General Hospital.
In front of him, “every emergency service” was trying to save his lifeless four-year-old son.
The junior kindergartener had what appeared to be a successful tonsil and adenoid surgery at McMaster Children’s Hospital a day earlier.
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Reid Hanans, described by his dad as a happy kid who loved playing in mud puddles with his older brother, was discharged three hours after the operation on May 13, 2024.
He was well enough that night to go outside and play at the family’s home in Simcoe.
There was no thought of a lingering threat from the surgery when Hanans left for work as a truck driver based out of Caledonia the next morning.
It wasn’t until he got a frantic phone call shortly after noon on May 14 from his wife that he was shocked to learn Reid’s life was in danger. (The couple has since separated.)
“My ex-wife was screaming on the phone that he stopped breathing,” Hanans said. “Luckily, I was still at the shop because, with my job, I usually travel a long way. I jumped in my truck and floored it from Caledonia to Simcoe as fast as I could and that was the worst drive I’ve ever had in my life … Your heart sinks.”
While tonsil surgery is considered extremely safe, postoperative bleeding occurs in about 5 per cent of cases — and it can be severe.
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Reid is described as suddenly coughing up copious amounts of blood before losing consciousness in documents from investigations by the coroner and the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO) into what happened that day.
CPR was started immediately and 911 was called. Reid had no vital signs when he arrived at the small community hospital and resuscitation efforts were underway when Hanans got there.
“You see all the emergency services working on him, you drop to your knees, and you just yell and scream because you can’t do nothing,” he said. “You’re helpless.”
Gta Doctor says his granddaughter was almost a third death following tonsil surgery at McMaster Children’s Hospital
Near-death in May raises questions about scope of independent external review into the death of
A doctor from McMaster was on the phone with Norfolk General staff and an Ornge air ambulance helicopter was waiting to take Reid to the regional children’s hospital in Hamilton, Hanans said. But Reid could not be revived.
“They couldn’t get him back. There was no way anyone could have saved him,” Hanans said. “It was so awful. It was life-changing and I’ll never forget it.”
Since that day, Hanans has struggled to understand what went wrong and how he lost his “funny guy” who loved riding horses, driving his papa’s tractor, camping, swimming and dirt bike rides with his dad.
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Hanans’ search for an explanation only intensified when, less than three weeks later, a second child died following the same surgery.
Other families also reported near-misses to The Spectator around that time.
‘Unexplainable tragedy’
Death following tonsil surgery is so rare, the majority of ear, nose and throat (ENT) specialists will go their entire career without seeing it happen.
Two deaths in a matter of weeks caused Hamilton Health Sciences (HHS) to shut down the tonsil surgery program at McMaster on June 4, 2024, so external and internal reviews could be done. Those results have never been made public.
When the surgeries resumed just over four months later on Oct. 7, 2024, Hanans was left with more questions than answers.
He wants to know if anything has changed in the health care system following the unexpected deaths of his young son and another child. Nothing has been made public, so his search continues.
“I don’t know what to think,” Hanans said. “I don’t trust our health care anymore.”
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The 45-year-old grieving dad, who now lives at Peacock Point in Haldimand County, says he feels he’s hit “rock bottom.”
In an attempt to understand Reid’s death, Hanans spoke to one of the experts who did the external review of the tonsil surgery program — Dr. Paolo Campisi, an ENT surgeon at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) with more than 20 years of experience.
In a recording of the 24-minute phone conversation provided to The Spectator by Hanans, the doctor told him there is nothing he can say to explain what happened.
“I think this is a true unexplainable tragedy,” Campisi told Hanans in the phone call from August 2024. “No words can really express how terrible this is.”
He told Hanans that Reid’s death was “nobody’s fault.”
When Hanans said he was “taking it pretty hard,” Campisi shared he is also a father, and that he cried for Reid while doing the external review.
“I can’t even begin to imagine,” Campisi said. “I’ve shed a few tears myself just immersing myself in this process … My heart breaks for you and your family.”
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The only comfort Campisi could offer Hanans was that there would be recommendations in the external review to make the risks of bleeding clearer to parents, to consider changing how decisions are made about the length of time kids stay at the hospital after tonsil surgery, and to check-in with families within 48 hours of discharge.
He also expressed worry about scaring families off the surgery while discussing the risks of severe postoperative bleeding.
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McMaster’s chief of pediatric surgery called the deaths “tragic” and offered “sincere
“The tonsil is surrounded by literally hundreds of these little tiny blood vessels,” Campisi explained in the phone call. “We find the little vessels and we cauterize them. But in spite of that, sometimes they can start to bleed again, and they can form a clot and then when that clot comes off, it can bleed a bit more. That’s probably what happened with Reid, but it was so much that it overwhelmed him. But why did that happen? I don’t know.”
Hanans has trouble accepting that Reid’s death is unexplainable. He says the independent panel of experts never spoke to him in depth as part of the review process, and he hasn’t seen the internal or external reviews.
HHS says quality-of-care reviews like these need to be kept confidential in their entirety so staff feel comfortable taking part and having an open dialogue.
The only information available comes from the recorded phone call with Campisi, as well as reports by the CPSO and the coroner provided to The Spectator by Hanans.
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The coroner listed the cause of death as “complications of tonsillectomy and adenoidectomy.”
The CPSO report stated the manner of death was related to airway obstruction due to bleeding and laryngeal edema. The latter is swelling and fluid in the larynx or voice box, and is a common complication of intubation to keep the airway open during surgery.
The report also revealed for the first time that a fifth-year ENT resident performed the surgery — not the McMaster surgeon with more than 20 years experience that Hanans thought was operating on Reid.
His complaint to the regulatory college that prompted the investigation focused on the specialist instead of the resident.
Campisi told Hanans it is common for residents to do surgery at teaching hospitals like McMaster. A resident is a medical doctor who is training in their chosen specialty.
“They are never left alone,” Campisi said. “They are never just doing everything, the staff doctors are always in there the entire time.”
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However, the CPSO report says the ENT surgeon was “present at the beginning and the end of the surgery.”
It concluded no action was required when it came to the McMaster surgeon. Hanans has asked for a review of the decision, which is set to take place in April.
In addition, he has put in a complaint to CPSO regarding the resident, who is no longer an active physician in Ontario. The resident is now a practicing specialist in British Columbia. The complaint against the resident was reviewed in January with a decision expected this month.
Reviews of tonsil surgery deaths not made public
The CPSO decisions are one of the only ways for Hanans to get a glimpse into what happened to Reid.
Since the beginning, HHS has tightly controlled information around the deaths and subsequent reviews.
The Spectator was the first to tell the public on June 5, 2024, that two children had died, tonsil surgeries were halted and an external review was underway. HHS did not make this information public until after the story broke.
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Little else is known except that internal quality-of-care reviews also took place.
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It took three weeks for HHS to admit no third patient was involved.
The hospital network has refused to release any part of the external review that was done to ensure the program delivered safe care when surgeries resumed.
HHS wouldn’t even name the panel of independent experts who examined the pediatric ENT surgical service after the deaths.
Their identities have only come to light now because of the conversation between Campisi and Hanans. During the call, the doctor said there were four reviewers. Two were experienced pediatric ENT specialists — Campisi from SickKids and Dr. Julie Strychowsky from London Health Sciences Centre. The other two were nurses from SickKids — one an executive director in an operating room and the other an educator.
At the same time, the internal quality-of-care reviews were done to see what could be learned from the deaths, but HHS has not publicly disclosed any of the findings.
The hospital network also won’t say what, if any, recommendations are contained within the external and internal reviews, or whether they resulted in changes to policies and procedures.
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As a result, The Spectator and CTV’s Carolyn Jarvis separately put in Freedom-of-Information requests to gain access to the reviews. HHS denied the requests and told the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario (IPC) that “public interest lies in shielding the documents from disclosure.”
The Spectator and Jarvis are each appealing the decisions.
The records are of such “high sensitivity,” according to HHS, that the hospital network initially refused to hand them over to the IPC to resolve the appeal by Jarvis. The IPC had to take the rare step of ordering the hospital network to hand over the records on Jan. 28, 2025.
The appeals are now awaiting a decision from an IPC adjudicator who will determine what, if anything, is made public.
HHS has never agreed to an interview with The Spectator regarding the deaths or the reviews.
“Given the external review was a confidential assessment focused on quality-of-care matters, HHS is unable to comment,” the hospital network said in a statement. “HHS engaged a panel of independent experts to conduct a comprehensive review of its pediatric ear, nose and throat surgical service for tonsil and adenoid procedures, to ensure that the program could continue to deliver safe care aligned with leading practices when reinitiated. The reviewers did not identify any specific actions, absence of actions, quality-of-care concerns, or systems issues that directly or indirectly contributed to the two deaths.”
Gta Tonsil surgeries halted at McMaster Children’s Hospital after two children die
An external independent review of the program and its care is taking place
Surgeries would go from typical to tragic
The documents from Hanans show no signs that Reid’s surgery would go from typical to tragic. It started out with Reid requiring treatment for sleep-disordered breathing, which is one of the most common reasons for kids to have their tonsils removed.
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“He was having breathing issues at night,” Hanans said. “He was always getting sick.”
Reid had his first procedure at the age of three in September 2023, when a small soft lump in the middle of his throat called a thyroglossal duct cyst was removed. The CPSO report said the operation successfully improved his snoring symptoms.
Reid had no known cardiac or respiratory conditions, no allergies and his immunizations were up to date.
Hanans said his family never imagined Reid could die after a surgery considered so safe that it has been difficult for researchers to put a number on how often fatalities happen. Deaths are so unusual, it is hard to get a large enough dataset to study.
One American study found 36 deaths out of 504,262 procedures in five U.S. states from 2005 to 2017. It translated to an overall rate of seven per 100,000 operations, concluded the research published in 2022 in the medical journal JAMA.
“It doesn’t add up in my mind,” Hanans said. “I feel they did not give me enough answers on why this happened.”
ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW Gta Tonsil surgeries to resume at McMaster Children’s Hospital in wake of deaths, external review
The procedures were temporarily halted in early June.
The CPSO report stated Reid’s surgery was routine and performed in 18 minutes — the doctor’s usual time is 15 minutes.
“At no point in time did any member of the surgical team voice concerns regarding the surgery,” the report stated.
The anesthesiologist noted that Reid exhibited airway obstruction when given anesthesia, which the CPSO report describes as a common and expected occurrence in children undergoing tonsil and adenoid surgery.
As a result, Reid was kept for an additional hour in recovery, the report stated, before being sent home in stable condition.
The coroner’s report says Reid went home three hours after the surgery and “played outside before and after dinner.”
He started coughing that night and slept with his mom.
“In the morning, Reid was reportedly not his usual self and suddenly began expelling bright red blood before becoming unresponsive,” stated the coroner’s report.
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The CPSO investigation found that “the operating room note describes a routine procedure; it documents no red flags or concerns about unexpected complications occurring during the patient’s surgery.”
In addition, the surgeon overseeing the procedure “did not feel that an error occurred,” stated the regulatory college.
The reviews done by the hospital were called “reassuring” by the CPSO.
“This indicates the hospital took the patient’s death very seriously,” the report stated. “The hospital’s review did not reveal any error or complication that occurred during or immediately following the patient’s surgery that could be linked to the hemorrhage he later suffered.”
What did death reviews recommend?
Campisi told Hanans a “specific breakdown into the cases” — the two deaths — was not done by the external reviewers. Instead, the focus was on doing a “thorough, full review” of the pediatric ENT surgery program, including how referrals are made, how children are seen in the clinic, what information is conveyed to families, what happens in the operating room and what medications are given.
“What we were not doing is a specific breakdown into the cases of the children that passed like Reid,” Campisi said to Hanans. “That’s not what I’m doing because I’m not a coroner. I’m not trained in that. I’m just looking at the processes.”
The Spectator asked Campisi how the reviewers could determine that no actions, quality-of-care concerns or systems issues contributed to the deaths if they did not do a specific breakdown into the cases.
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Campisi said he is “very limited” in what he can say due to “confidentiality obligations.”
“I can, however, confirm that as part of the review, we considered the two cases,” Campisi said in a statement. “This is different than the type of review a coroner does into the medical cause of death in any individual case. That is the distinction I was trying to explain.”
It’s not clear exactly what the reviewers “considered” in relation to the deaths. HHS has said it was “within the context of a full program review.”
Meanwhile, the coroner’s report says the findings of the hospital’s “review of care” were provided, but doesn’t specify whether that is the external or internal reviews, or both.
This is all important because it raises questions about the scope of the external investigation into the deaths, and shows the lack of clarity that results from the reviews being kept secret.
When it comes to the recommendations, Campisi suggested to Hanans that HHS was open to being more clear with families about how “complications can occur and sometimes bleeding complications can be very, very severe.” He suggested it might become part of the consent form.
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But he also explained his worry around that recommendation.
“There’s no doubt that the tonsillectomy is a very effective operation, and what we don’t want to do is to frighten everybody to the point where no one will want an operation because then we might be doing more harm,” Campisi said. “I know that’s not easy for you to hear, and it’s not easy for me to say because of what happened to Reid, and I’m not downplaying that at all.”
Campisi went on to talk about how decisions are made around when kids can go home after tonsil and adenoid surgery. He said children kept overnight are usually under the age of three, have other medical issues or live very far from a hospital.
“We have asked them to perhaps reflect on that a bit more and maybe change them,” Campisi said about the criteria around discharge. “You have to look at what a family’s comfort levels are.”
Hanans asked whether McMaster should do phone check-ins with families after discharge. Campisi noted that neither SickKids nor London Health Sciences Centre do this.
“This is a good learning experience for me, too,” Campisi said. “What you’re telling me, I’m listening to … I think probably what’s going to happen here (at SickKids) and in London and in Hamilton, is our clinic nurses that know the families would be given the numbers and say, ‘You know what, we should probably check on them within 48 hours.'”
Campisi said the review tried to answer the question, “How could we have done better?”
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“We were not doing a superficial look,” Campisi said in the call. “But a very detailed look, which included reading a lot of the material that they have, talking to at least 50 people around the hospital that play different roles, a site visit, going through the operating room. Extremely detailed from beginning to end the entire process, up to and including talking to some families.”
Hanans said he was not among the families consulted by the reviewers.
Campisi told Hanans HHS was expected to communicate the findings and recommendations in the external review to the public.
“The hospital will be responsible to share that report in some way, shape or form to the people that they have to respond to, including the Minister of Health, and also to the public so they’ll become aware,” Campisi said. “They’re going to have a communication plan with the public.”
HHS did not answer questions about whether the extremely limited information provided meets the expectations of the reviewers regarding the report being shared with the public in some way.
Campisi said the “real goal” of the external review was to “improve things.”
“To try to prevent this from happening again,” Campisi said.
But it’s not clear to Hanans whether anything has been done to prevent future deaths following pediatric tonsil surgery.
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He wants to make sure Reid’s death doesn’t get forgotten and he wants people to know what was lost.
“He was a really happy kid, always laughing and smiling,” Hanans said. “He’d always have something funny to say.”
Reid was so caring that he made an effort to hang out with one of the shy kids in his junior kindergarten class at Lakewood Elementary School in Port Dover, Hanans said.
Some of Hanans’ favourite memories are of Reid and his brother playing in mud puddles and doing belly flops in the pond.
“He just loved being on his dirt bike with his dad doing wheelies down the road,” Hanans said. “I miss him every day.”
