On Strike Day, A 55-Year-Old Woman Dies From Weight-Loss Surgery

A coroner’s court has heard that a lady passed away following problems during her weight-loss operation on the first day of a junior doctors’ strike.

Susan Evans, 55, returned to Queen Alexandra Hospital, in Portsmouth just two days after she underwent gastric bypass surgery – suffering from stomach pains.

The hospital has recently come under fire from a coroner who discovered that Ms Evans was not visited by a senior physician and that there was no dedicated weight-loss nurse on duty.

By the time Ms Evans returned, after first being discharged, she was ‘extremely unwell’ and her condition persisted to decline until she died the following month.

Now, an inquest into her demise has heard of several ‘failures’ by Portsmouth Hospital NHS Trust which ‘contributed more than minimally to her death’.

Coroner Sally Olsen said Ms Evans underwent elective Roux-en-Y gastric bypass surgery on July 11 last year, which was the first day of industrial action by junior doctors.

The surgical procedure helps with weight loss by reducing the size of the stomach and rerouting the small intestine.

An inquest heard that the surgery ‘went to plan’ and steps were taken to avoid the possibility of an ‘anastomotic leak’, a recognised complication of gastric bypass surgery.

It was said that Ms Evans initially ‘recovered well’ but experienced stomach pain in the early hours of July 13, which was the first day of a junior doctors’ strike.

Ms Olsen, assistant coroner of Hampshire, Portsmouth and Southampton, added: ‘Unrelated to this, the hospital only had the equivalent of one full-time specialist bariatric nurse, who was not on duty.

‘Contrary to Queen Alexandra Hospital’s written policy for gastric bypass patients, Ms Evans was not seen by a member of the specialist bariatric team on [that day] and was not seen by a senior doctor after reporting pain in order to rule out the possibility of an anastomotic leak.’

It was heard that the night nursing team, who administered pain relief, were ‘unaware’ of the latter requirement.

Ms Evans was also not seen by a member of the bariatric team – a group of medical professionals who work together to treat patients with obesity – before her discharge.

The patient left the Portsmouth hospital ‘in a degree of pain’ and was readmitted two days later.

By this time, she was ‘extremely unwell’ with sepsis and had to undergo corrective surgery on July 15 before a further operation some ten days later.

The coroner said: ‘Despite appropriate medical care following her re-admission, her condition deteriorated, and she died at Queen Alexandra Hospital on 12 August 2023.

This preventable fatality was the result of self-centred doctors who were on a political mission to overthrow the government and neglected their patients.

Doctors shouldn’t be given a continued employment contract if they strike. They are among the best-paid graduates in the UK and they whinge like their mother is still milking them.

Although their income is quite substantial and they have access to a very generous NHS pension, they nevertheless feel that their pay is inadequate, and I question why the hospital released the lady so quickly. Typically, you are in the hospital for a while at least because you have to have a scan to check that all looks well, like no leakage, and then you are allowed something soft to eat like a yoghurt.

You have to re-learn how to eat after surgery because you just can’t go back to everyday meals. It’s like being a baby all over again, having soft mushy meals to begin with. There was something extremely wrong going on here.