A 24-stone mother has died after having gastric band surgery so she could go on holiday with her daughters.

Married mother-of-two Kim Swan, 43, waited two years for her dream weight loss operation so she could go to America with Jodie, 24, and Bethany, 18, without being “embarrassed” by her figure.

But an inquest at Brighton coroner’s court was told how just six months after the slimming procedure, Mrs Swan, of Collingwood Close, Peacehaven, was dead.

Her husband John Swan, 45, who met childhood sweetheart Kim when they were 13, described how when he came home from work on August 13 his wife was “crawling the walls with pain.”

The procedure at St Richard's Hospital in Chichester on August 5 was deemed by doctors to have gone well despite Mrs Swan being a “high risk” patient, but a week later she was in agony.

Mr Swan, a builder, said: "I got home from work and she was very distressed. She was crawling the walls with pain, she was a different person.

“She was complaining of pain similar to that she had felt after the caesarean sections she had to give birth to her daughters.”

He called an ambulance and she was rushed to the Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton.

Initial surgical investigations found a leak in Mrs Swan's. During a second examination on August 21 a 1cm hole in her stomach was revealed and she spent weeks in intensive care before she was allowed home on November 5.

But during her time at home the abscesses around Mrs Swan's stomach became infected.

Mr Swan said his wife was struggling to consume even basic nutrients and felt desperate as clumps of he hair began falling out in the shower.

Having celebrated Christmas with her husband and children she deteriorated and when she returned to hospital on January 18 it became clear she had such severe sepsis that Mrs Swan wouldn’t respond to treatment.

She died at 2.30pm on January 25.

Dr David Wright, a pathologist at the Royal Sussex, gave the cause of death as complications following bariatric surgery.

He said: "The initial findings were that she wouldn't have died if she hadn't had the surgery. The surgery certainly led to the abdominal wall sepsis."

Coroner Veronica Hamilton-Deeley will record a verdict on Tuesday morning.

Outside of court, Mr Swan said: “To anyone thinking of having this surgery I would say – don’t do it.

“She wanted more from her life she wanted it for her children and for me. She felt it would make things better.

“It was supposed to change her life but it killed her.”