Grandmother died after her surgeon put in heart valve upside down
A GRANDMOTHER didn’t wake up from a routine operation after a blundering surgeon put in a heart valve upside down.
Sheila Hynes, 71, suffered massive internal bleeding from the error.
A second operation to get her heart working failed and she died in intensive care a week later.
The surgeon in charge – Asif Raza Shah – is still employed by the NHS hospital and has not been disciplined.
mrs Hynes’s family say their lives have been destroyed by her death at Newcastle’s Freeman Hospital in April 2015. They also accused managers of patronising them and mocking their accents.
Their meeting with hospital staff was transcribed in a way they say ridiculed them for using phrases and words like ‘ me mam’ and ‘summit’ instead of ‘ my mum’ and ‘something’.
mrs Hynes had been extremely active and the week before the operation had gone on holiday.
Her daughter Jan Hopper, 55, from Haltwhistle, Northumberland, said: ‘ my life has been destroyed by what happened to my mother.
‘The week before her operation we had been in Tenerife as her sister carol had just been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. it was a bittersweet time and mum had wanted to get her own operation over with so she could care for her sister.
‘my mother was the picture of health that week.’
She added: ‘i can remember saying to her, “mum, you look absolutely stunning.” ’
Heart valve replacements are among the most commonly performed operations on the NHS. Approximately 39,000 patients have heart surgery in the UK each year. Bypasses are the
‘My life has been destroyed’
most common type, followed by valve replacements.
The NHS has a poor safety record for serious mistakes and there are around six so- called ‘never events’ every week. These potentially fatal mistakes include removing kidneys instead of ovaries and leaving scalpels inside patients.
mrs Hynes’s inquest will be held later this year and the family are taking legal action against the hospital, partly motivated by a caring nurse who told them to leave ‘no stone unturned’.
The widow – who had seven grandchildren and eight greatgrandchildren – had been told the operation would improve her breathing and circulation.
The Newcastle Hospitals NHS Foundations Trust, which runs Freeman, admitted ‘full breach of duty’ and accepted the error.
A trust statement said: ‘Our thoughts are with mrs Hynes’s family at this difficult time.
‘Our staff always try to provide the best possible care to all of our patients. So we take the death of any of our patients very seriously. Sadly, when providing complex treatment there may be rare occasions when something unexpected happens, and in those circumstances we always carry out an in- depth investigation and we have done so in this case.’
The family were also left devastated when mrs Hynes’s sister carol died of pancreatic cancer shortly after the tragedy.
Nicola Evans, from Hudgell Solicitors in london, accused the hospital of breaching the Human Rights Act.
She said: ‘This is an absolutely shocking case. A family has been robbed of a much-loved mother, grandmother and great-grandmother simply because a surgeon has not taken the care to ensure he has fitted a heart valve the right way up.’ criticising the transcripts, she added: ‘We don’t know why or how the family’s responses were written up in that way but it shows insensitivity at what is obviously a very distressing time.’