A patient undergoing a routine pacemaker replacement at Britain’s biggest heart and lung hospital died after suffering “battlefield” blood loss, an inquest was told.
Adrian Budd, 84, went into cardiac arrest afterwards as the cardiologist who had performed the operation on him at the Royal Brompton hospital in Chelsea caught the Tube home.
Westminster coroner’s court heard that a panicked anaesthetist found a junior doctor in a changing room to give emergency treatment to Mr Budd, a Salvation Army member from Greenford, but he died three days later.
He lost six litres of blood and one cause of death was given as “exsanguination”, meaning his body had been drained of blood. Coroner Dr William Dolman said this “makes you think of battlefield casualties”.
Mr Budd, a retired BT mechanic and QPR fan, was admitted to the Brompton in October 2014. His cardiologist, Professor John C Chambers, told the inquest he did not take an X-ray to show the condition of Mr Budd’s veins before the operation, but denied working “blind”.
Dr Vias Markides, head of the Brompton’s heart division, said a 1cm tear was created in one of Mr Budd’s veins by Professor Chambers. The coroner said he was considering making a “prevention of future deaths” report when the inquest concluded later today.
Coroner Dr William Dolman said the term exsanguination “makes you think of battlefield fatalities”. He asked pathologist Dr John Van Der Welt, of St Thomas’s hospital, whether it was excessive. But Dr Van Der Welt said the term was interchangeable with haemorrhage as there was a “significant bleed”.
Today independent expert witness Mark Gallagher, of St George’s hospital, told the court: “If things had gone differently he (Mr Budd) could have got out of hospital the day after the procedure, feeling better than he had done for years."
- This item has been updated to clarify that the doctor who performed the procedure on Mr Budd was John C Chambers, who works primarily at Ealing Hospital.
