A widow spent two years trying to find out why her husband died, only to be told doctors had lost his notes and had probably run out of beds.

Barry Bagshaw went to hospital suffering chest pains but was sent home within a couple of hours.

Forty-eight hours later Mr Bagshaw died in his wife’s arms.

After two years of trying to find out why her husband was sent home from the Royal Sussex County Hospital, Brighton, pensioner Marie-Josie Bagshaw has finally been given a response to her complaint.

In a letter from the hospital she was told that no trace of the notes taken on the day he was taken into hospital could be found, but doctors who treated him thought he had been sent home because there were not enough beds.

Mr Bagshaw fell ill in September 2008, but it has taken his widow two years to get any answers from Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals Trusts about why he was discharged.

Mrs Bagshaw, of Piddinghoe Avenue, Peacehaven said: “My husband was admitted to hospital at 8 o’clock on the Wednesday evening and was discharged home at 12 midnight and told there was nothing wrong.

“Forty-eight hours after that he died in my arms.

“He said to me ‘I don’t feel well’ and I was trying to hold him as he went. It was a heart attack. An ambulance came and took him to hospital but it was too late.

“They did a tracheotomy and tried to revive him but he had already died.

“I wanted to find out why they had discharged him.”

A spokeswoman for the trust said: “We would only have made the decision to send him home if he was medically fit.

“Even if there were no beds free we would not send a patient home unless they were medically fit.”

The hospital also apologised to Mrs Bagshaw for not making the reasons for his discharge from hospital clearer at the time.