Back to newsCompensation for 82 year old client following life changing injury due to negligence during Gastroscopy procedure
Posted in News on Thursday, January 23rd, 2025
Karen Kearney, Ernest Cantillon and Karen’s team Tricia Sisk and April Wiseman were delighted to settle our client’s case in the High Court in Dublin for substantial damages on the 21st of January 2025.
Briefly, in 2022, our client’s General Medical Practitioner referred her to Sligo University Hospital (SUH) for endoscopic investigation of epigastric pain and heartburn – the procedure in lay terms was one to send a scope down her throat to her abdomen.
On Wednesday the 13th July 2022, she was admitted to SUH for a diagnostic gastroscopy. The procedure was performed on our client, under sedation, by a Surgical Registrar.
The procedure was curtailed due to a failure to intubate the oesophagus and due to the passage of blood into the mouth and nasal passages.
Subsequent scanning revealed that our client’s oropharynx was perforated by the scope, leaving a hole.
As a result of the perforation she developed life threatening infections and required long hospital stays, including in the ICU and ultimately lost the ability to eat and drink.
She has not eaten nor drank anything orally since September 2022.
She was finally discharged from hospital in February 2023, not to her lovely home but rather to a nursing home.
Prior to the perforation, our client was aged 80, fit and well and was a very independent and active woman, living in her own home.
When we were consulted by our client’s family in April 2023, who had many concerns about the appropriateness of the care afforded to their mother by SUH, we commenced our investigations promptly and sought records and on review identified areas of concern in the care prompting advice to the family to take the next step in the investigations, namely, the expensive step to commission a report from an appropriate expert, in this case a Consultant General and Upper Gastrointestinal Surgeon. We carefully chose this expert, based in the UK to ensure independence, and world renowned in this area of expertise. We collated, organised the records and briefed the GI expert and emphasised the urgency with which we required his report. He turned around his report within three months in which he confirmed breach of duty and causation on the part of SUH (namely that the gastroscopy was performed negligently and that it caused all of our client’s subsequent difficulties). Our client and her family’s concerns were vindicated. Our client then made the brave step to instruct us to proceed with a claim and take on the might of the HSE. Never in a million years did she think she would ever find herself in this position at her age but she found the courage and the confidence, which she told me she had lost due to all that happened to her.
We then issued proceedings, served them on the HSE and commissioned various reports from experts to include an ENT expert, Neuro-rehabilitation expert, Care expert, Psychiatrist, SLT expert, Physiotherapy expert, Nursing Home care expert and Actuarial expert.
We sought to have the Plaintiff’s case managed and an early Trial date which was granted by Order of Mr. Justice Coffey dated the 30th October 2024. The case was settled on the opening day of the Trial.
The compensation our client received will go some way to helping her get her life back in terms of securing accommodation appropriate to her needs, and appropriate therapies.
Our client also secured an apology from SUH, read out in open Court, in which they acknowledged that the perforation resulted in life changing circumstances for her and apologised for same.
Our client remarkably has long since forgiven the trainee doctor who performed the procedure on her and caused the perforation. Let us hope that appropriate lessons have been learned by the HSE in this regard.
She has found it more difficult however to forgive the treatment she received subsequently and in particular, when they wanted to send her home alone to a vacant house under the care of the community team and carers to which her family vehemently disagreed. The following day our client was rushed to Galway hospital with a life threatening infection and where she credits her life being saved by Dr. Lang and his team.
Our client’s daughter in an interview with the media after the ruling of her case said that her mum is 82 and has loads of ambitions.
We are privileged to have played a part in helping this remarkable woman achieve them.
https://www.rte.ie/news/2025/0121/1492086-sligo-hospital-apologises-patient/
Contact us at Cantillons Solicitors at +353 (0)21 4275673 or info@cantillons.com if you would like more information.
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