Claim against NHS trust for tragic failure to recognise patient's VTE risk during orthopaedic surgery

We have recently settled a claim for a woman who was widowed at a young age when her husband died from a pulmonary embolism after orthopaedic surgery. Our client’s late husband had a medical history, which included a DVT following a long-haul flight. He was then anticoagulated with warfarin and, for a while, had to use crutches to mobilise.

At around the same time, possibly through having to use crutches, he developed a problem with his right Achilles tendon. Following an orthopaedic referral, he was advised to undergo surgery in the form of a bilateral gastrocnemius release. The surgery went ahead but according to a serious incident report by the NHS trust where the operation took place, his high risk of venous thromboembolism (VTE) was not recognised on a number of occasions, both before and during his day surgery.

One week following the procedure, he collapsed at home and died. He had suffered a cardiac arrest caused by a pulmonary embolism, believed to have originated as a DVT. He was aged only 54 when he passed away; his wife was 47 years old at the time.

We brought a claim and secured an admission of liability that the NHS trust had failed to recognise that the patient was at a high risk of developing a blood clot. On causation, the claimant outlined her case that on the balance of probabilities adequate prophylaxis would have prevented the further DVT her husband suffered and would have avoided the fatal pulmonary embolism. Ultimately, this led to a full admission of breach of duty and causation. 

Our clinical negligence team undertook a forensic analysis of income, expenditure, and loss of financial dependency, involving a painstaking line by line analysis of all bank statement entries and commissioning forensic accountancy evidence, to support a loss of dependency claim for our client based on her late husband’s income and pension. This approach, a departure from the traditional dependency calculations, was contested by the defendant trust but ultimately the claim was concluded successfully at a settlement meeting.

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