A Shropshire coroner has called for a report from hospital and medical company bosses after a diagnostic machine failed to pick up a 70-year-old man’s potentially fatal heart condition.
Retired Ministry of Defence firefighter John Michael Short died after collapsing while playing golf just days after being discharged from Telford’s Princess Royal Hospital, an inquest heard yesterday.
Doctors had allowed him home after a machine gave a “false negative”, said Telford & Wrekin Coroner Mr Michael Gwynne.
He has now taken the unusual step of opening an inquest, in a case which could have national implications.
Mr Short, of Ewart Road, Donnington, Telford, was first admitted to the hospital on Christmas Eve after complaining of chest pains.
An initial test on a blood sample indicated he had had a heart attack.
But a second test gave a normal result and this, coupled with an inconclusive ECG result and Mr Short being “asymptomatic” of pain, led doctors to conclude he had not had a heart attack and he was discharged on Christmas Day.
Coroner’s officer Mrs Julie Hartridge said Mr Short had collapsed while playing golf on December 28 and was taken to the Princess Royal Hospital where he died.
A post-mortem showed the cause of death as natural causes and he was cremated.
Mr Gwynne said on January 18 he had received a call from the hospital’s clinical risk co-ordinator “to the effect that a combination of events had occurred which affected the diagnosis of Mr Short’s heart attack, which he had suffered on December 24″.
He said: “There was reasonable cause to suspect that Mr Short’s death had occurred in circumstances where I would normally have held an inquest.
“I also believed it was in the public interest in view of matters highlighted in the report and to prevent further deaths occurring in similar circumstances.”
Mr Gwynne said he had applied to the Ministry of Justice under the Coroner’s Act 1988 to hold an inquest and would be seeking statements from hospital chiefs and Siemens Medical Solutions Diagnostics Ltd, which made the machine involved.
He adjourned the inquest to a date to be fixed.
By Peter Johnson and Lisa Rowley
Share this article:
What are these?