Woman died after operation

5:19pm Tuesday 5th February 2008

An inquest has been told that a woman died after an operation at Bradford Royal Infirmary to remove a fibroid from her swollen football-sized uterus.

The hearing in Bradford today heard that a normal uterus should be the size of an egg and that although 32-year-old Safeena Khan had undergone injections to shrink it before surgery, hers was still the size of a grapefruit when she went down to theatre.

Coroner Roger Whittaker adjourned the inquest to gather evidence from intensive care staff at BRI but he warned Mrs Khan's family that his verdict would still probably be "misadventure" on a "perfectly proper and lawful procedure" which "unexpectedly went wrong."

He also criticised Bradford Teaching Hospitals Trust for not informing Mrs Khan's family about the findings of its own internal report and said it was "a retrograde step."

The day after Mrs Khan's operation last June she started feeling unwell and a follow-up operation revealed her small bowel had been perforated.

Two small holes were found that could have been caused by a needle closing the wound after surgery or possibly by a suture drain when it was withdraw causing a tear, the inquest heard.

Mrs Khan's gynaecologist Sian Jones said: "My immediate feeling when we took her back to theatre was that I must have caught the small bowel during closure but I still can't understand how that could have happened, I would have seen it."

She also told the inquest the hospital had now stopped using those types of drains she had used on Mrs Khan because of "problems".

After the damaged bowel had been repaired, Mrs Khan should have made a recovery said Miss Jones. A third operation to find out why she was getting worse was carried out but nothing showed up, she told the inquest.

Mrs Khan, of St Andrew's Villas, Listerhills, Bradford, eventually died from multi-organ failure in intensive care on July 11.

A post-mortem examination revealed she had developed Adult Respiratory Distress Syndrome, Peritonitis - inflammation of the abdomen lining and blood poisoning.