Pair died after same feeding tube operation at the Royal Sussex, inquest hears (From The Argus)

Pair died after same feeding tube operation at the Royal Sussex, inquest hears

3:00pm Tuesday 16th March 2010 in

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An inquest will examine if faulty equipment was to blame when a journalist and a pensioner died after having the same operation.

Barbara Dalzell and Latimer Giggins died within weeks of each other after feeding tubes were inserted during treatment at the Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton.

Miss Dalzell, 58, the first female chief sub-editor of a national daily newspaper, had cancer in one of her tonsils.

Mr Giggins, 76, needed a feeding tube because he was being treated for cancer of the lower jaw.

Both died from peritonitis, inflammation of the abdominal wall, within two weeks of having the feeding tubes inserted, an inquest was told.

Post-mortem examinations showed they had died because the tubes were loose and food and fluid had leaked into their abdominal cavities.

Mr Giggins, of Queen Caroline Close, Hove, died at the Royal Sussex on April 17 last year.

Miss Dalzell, of Marina, Bexhill, who had worked for The Guardian and the Financial Times, died on May 27.

Coroner Veronica Hamilton-Deeley began hearing joint inquests yesterday because of the similar circumstances surrounding their deaths.

She told an inquest jury at Hove Crown Court that pathologist Dr David Wright had reported that both deaths resulted from peritonitis after the tubes were inserted.

She said: “The issue you will have to consider is did the tubes fail, did they move or did they not operate as they should have done because they were faulty?” She told the jurors they would also have to consider whether the tubes came with adequate instructions.

She added: “You will look at if there was a failure to comply with the instructions when the devices were inserted.

“You also need to consider if there was coincidentally in each patient a physical inability to cope with the device.

“You need to consider that when things went wrong, were there signs of this that were either not recognised, ignored or misunderstood in circumstances where had they been acted on the patient’s life might have been saved.”

The hearing continues.