DALLAS — Thomas Eric Duncan’s temperature spiked to 103 degrees during the hours of his initial visit to an emergency room — a fever that was flagged with an exclamation point in the hospital’s record-keeping system, his medical records show.
Despite telling a nurse that he had recently been in Africa and displaying other symptoms that could indicate Ebola, the man who would become the only person to die from the disease in the United States underwent a battery of tests and was eventually sent home.
Duncan’s family provided his medical records to the Associated Press — more than 1,400 pages in all. They encompass his time in the ER, his urgent return to the hospital two days later, and his steep decline as his organs began to fail.
In a statement issued Friday, Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital said it had made procedural changes and continues to ‘‘review and evaluate’’ the decisions surrounding Duncan’s care.
Duncan carried the deadly virus with him from his home in Liberia, though he showed no symptoms when he left for the United States. He arrived in Dallas on Sept. 20 and fell ill several days later.
When he first showed up at the hospital, Duncan complained of abdominal pain, dizziness, a headache, and decreased urination. He reported severe pain — rating it an eight on a scale of 10.
Doctors gave him CT scans to rule out appendicitis, stroke, and numerous other serious ailments. Ultimately, he was prescribed antibiotics and told to take Tylenol, then returned to the apartment where he was staying with a Dallas woman and three other people.
‘‘I have given patient instructions regarding their diagnosis, expectations for the next couple of days, and specific return precautions,’’ according to the emergency room physician’s note. ‘‘The condition of the patient at this time is stable.’’
After Duncan’s condition worsened, someone in the apartment called 911, and paramedics took him back to the hospital on Sept. 28. That is when he was admitted and swiftly put in isolation.
Josephus Weeks, Duncan’s nephew, said the care his uncle received was ‘‘either incompetence or negligence.’’
Either way ‘‘there is a problem, and we need to find the answer to it,’’ he said, adding that it was ‘‘conspicuous’’ that all the white Ebola patients in the United States survived ‘‘and the one black man died.’’
The documents also show that a nurse recorded early in Duncan’s first hospital visit that he recently came to the United States from Africa, though he denied having been in contact with anyone sick.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had alerted hospitals nationwide to take a travel history for patients with Ebola-like symptoms.
According to the records, Duncan was 45. Relatives said he was 42. The discrepancy could not be immediately resolved.
The hospital said it had made changes to its intake process and other practices ‘‘to better screen for all critical indicators’’ of Ebola.
Doctors who evaluated Duncan did not respond to messages left at their offices by the AP.
A spokeswoman for the Texas Department of State Health Services said the agency was considering investigating the hospital for compliance with state health and safety laws.
After it became clear that Duncan was suffering from Ebola, another option would have been to give him a transfusion from an Ebola survivor in the hopes that antibodies in the survivor’s blood could help him fight off the disease.
But Duncan did not receive such a transfusion because the blood types did not match, the hospital said.