A family from West Yorkshire is to receive a six-figure out-of-court settlement following a claim for a fatal delay in identifying surgical complications.
On 28th April 2009, thirty-eight year old Tracy Hall was admitted to the Pinderfields Hospital in Wakefield for the reversal of a stoma. The elective surgery took nine hours to complete, after which Tracy suffered complications including internal bleeding and an infection.
Tracy´s condition continued to deteriorate and, on 4th May, nursing staff identified blood in her stoma bag. Tracy was returned to theatre, where it was discovered that an artery had been cut during surgery and that the cause of the blood was that her abdominal wall had burst.
Tracy had been diagnosed with Crohn´s disease in 1996 and, prior to her surgery, her condition had been particularly active. She had suffered from abdominal pain and lost nearly three stones in weight in the months leading up to her operation.
In a very weak condition, Tracy was moved into the hospital´s High Dependency Unit. She was sedated and put onto a life support machine, but tragically died eight days later from multiple organ failure caused by sepsis.
Tracy´s husband instructed medical negligence solicitors to investigate the care his wife had received subsequent to her surgery. The solicitors discovered that there had be a delay in identifying and treating the complications and that, due to Tracy´s condition prior to the operation, surgery should not have even taken place.
Tracy´s husband subsequently made a claim for a fatal delay in identifying surgical complications against the Mid Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust. The NHS Trust admitted that the standard of care Tracy received both before and after her surgery were sub-standard, and a six-figure settlement of the claim was negotiated.
Speaking after the claim for a fatal delay in identifying surgical complications had been resolved, Tracy´s mother told reporters: “We have been completely heartbroken since losing Tracy – it was incredibly difficult for the whole family to see her suffer like she did and deteriorate so quickly in front of our eyes. We never imagined that just two weeks after surgery she would no longer be with us. I just hope that this doesn’t happen to any other families and that the NHS Trust learns from its mistakes.”