Mr P came to Nelsons to following complications after non-life threatening surgery to his neck.
- When he came round from the operation, he couldn’t move one side of his body,
- He was unable to breathe unassisted
- He was confused and unable to speak.
- Whilst in Intensive Care, mistakes were made in the management of his tracheostomy.
The operation notes read as if nothing untoward had happened and there was no obvious evidence of sub-standard practice. The hospital suggested that many of the original radiological films and images had been lost - but we knew that many of them would have been stored on computer disk, so we should be able to retrieve them.
As soon as we had the copies, we obtained a report from an independent neuroradiologist who was able to confirm that Mr P had suffered a stroke during the operation, probably as a result of excessive retraction at the operation site and that he had also suffered nerve damage. This then enabled our independent surgeon to confirm that it was these events occurred because of poor operative technique.
Mr P made a reasonable recovery from his injuries but still had problems with speech and movement and was unlikely to be able to work again.
The hospital accepted that their care of Mr P in Intensive Care had been sub-standard and a sum of compensation was agreed. They still denied any error had occurred during the operation and court proceedings were served which were hotly contested:-
- Such was the weight of the independent evidence we had gathered that a 6 figure settlement was agreed a few days before the case was due to go on trial.
