Toddler dies after hospital ‘put off emergency op to clear waiting list’
A TODDLER died at a top children’s hospital after managers prioritised tackling waiting lists over emergency care, surgeons claimed yesterday.
Kayden Urmston-Bancroft, aged 20 months, was ‘put in a room and left’ after being admitted to a ward with a life-threatening hernia, according to his family.
They say that despite his intense pain, they were told every day for three days that he couldn’t have an operation. Tragically, Kayden went into cardiac arrest and doctors at Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital were unable to save him.
Damningly, a consultant allegedly offered to cancel his list of planned routine surgery so he could operate on Kayden, but NHS managers refused.
NHS chief executive Simon Stevens warns today that waiting lists will rise as hospitals focus on meeting targets such as A&E wait times and cancer care. But surgeons said emergency cases were not being given sufficient priority and warned that it could result in more tragedies.
Consultant paediatric surgeon Basem Khalil said: ‘We just worry how many more children must die before management is held to account and before the right changes are made.’
Surgeon James Morecroft, who retired from the hospital this year, added: ‘There was a desire to do the elective workload, perhaps at the expense of some of the emergency stuff.’ Kayden was taken to Stepping Hill Hospital in Stockport on April 11 last year after falling and banging his mouth on his bottle, causing his lips to turn blue. Medical staff discovered he had a hole in his diaphragm which had probably been there since birth, causing his bowel to enter his chest.
They requested a transfer to the Royal Manchester for an operation, but no intensive care bed was available. The following day he was transferred but only to an ordinary ward.
Kayden’s grandmother, Julie Rowlands, 44, said: ‘His care was appalling. He was basically put in a room, and left. And all we got, nearly every day, was, “He’s not having the operation today”.’
According to one surgeon, a consultant requested that his planned elective surgery list be cancelled to allow him to carry out an operation, but this was vetoed by management. The trust says it has no record of this request. The following night, Kayden went into cardiac arrest, but problems with an emergency phone line allegedly meant it took nearly 30 minutes to resuscitate him.
The toddler finally had surgery to repair the hernia, but tragically he had suffered severe brain injury through being starved of oxygen and died two days later. Kayden’s mother, Shannon Ban- croft, 20, from Stockport, said: ‘I had Kayden put on my lap and then the ventilator tube was taken out. My mum knelt down at the side of me so that she could put her hand to his chest and feel his heart. My mum then told me that his heart had stopped beating and that he had passed away.’
Mrs Rowlands, a care co-ordinator for the elderly, added: ‘I wanted to strangle somebody. You don’t expect to take a baby to hospital and come away without one. The director of the hospital came to see us – I told him that they had failed my grandson.’ The trust’s own investigation found ‘significant problems’ with Kayden’s care, which was ‘not timely and resulted in his death’, according to the BBC. The trust is understood to have settled a legal case brought by the family for an undisclosed five-figure sum.
Central Manchester University Hospitals Trust said it ‘sincerely regrets’ Kayden’s death. It claimed a coroner investigating his death had asked it not to comment on details of his treatment to avoid prejudicing the hearing.
Lawyer Stephen Clarkson, who represented Kayden’s family, said: ‘The real tragedy here is that Kayden’s death was entirely preventable. It is deeply concerning that this happened at one of the country’s leading hospitals for children.’
‘He was put in a room and left’