The Hospital Authority (HA) on Monday said that a girl who suffered a cardiac arrest while getting stitches at a hospital didn’t have any underlying illnesses, after tests on her were negative.

Lai Sum-yuet, who’s now five, went to Yan Chai Hospital in late May to treat a head wound, but while getting stitches, her heart stopped beating for nearly 20 minutes.

She remains in critical condition in intensive care at Princess Margaret Hospital.

Her father had accused medical staff of pushing her head down on a pillow during the procedure, something that was denied by the HA, which said her head was tilted sideways.

After meeting with the girl’s family, the HA’s chief executive, Tony Ko, again apologised over the matter, saying the gesture was needed since the “unfortunate incident” took place at a public hospital.

But he wouldn’t say whether human error was involved, citing an ongoing criminal investigation by the police.

Ko stressed he wouldn’t go into details over exactly what went wrong, but an expert review of child care guidelines recommended checking patient vitals and consider using sedatives.

“For example, when doing such procedures, [the expert panel recommended] how to better communicate with the patients and the relatives, how to closely monitor the patients, as well as in suitable cases when we need to introduce procedural sedation," he said.

“[The panel is] not investigating the case, so mainly the purpose is to review our present guidelines to see which are the areas that we need to further emphasise and remind our colleagues to pay particular attention.”

The HA chief admitted the guidelines wouldn’t clearly list out all scenarios, such as whether sedation was needed in each case.

Ko said officials discussed with frontline staff on ways to raise the overall safety of child patients, and the recommendations would be passed on to staff again later on.

He said two medical staff involved in the girl’s treatment were transferred to non-clinical positions.

Ko said officials would do their best to provide medical care to the girl as well as give necessary support to her family.