£70,000 settlement obtained for Norfolk woman who was given the wrong treatment in hospital

Julie Crossley, a medical negligence claim specialist at Ashtons Legal, has obtained compensation for a woman who lost the sight in one eye.

This occurred because doctors in different medical teams in the same hospital failed to take account of what each other were prescribing in an appropriate way.

Mrs T was referred to the hospital by her GP because she was reporting pains in several of her joints.  She was seen multiple times over a six month period.  She then began to suffer problems with her vision and, after some delay, an optometrist diagnosed Giant Cell Arteritis (GCA), a condition where the lining of the arteries, particularly in the head, becomes inflamed.

She was prescribed suitable treatment for this and her symptoms quickly improved. However, the Rheumatology department reduced the prescribed dosage to a standard amount and then advised her to miss a day of treatment altogether, at which point her symptoms worsened and she lost the vision in her right eye completely.

Julie comments: “This would have been entirely avoidable if Mrs T’s reported headaches had been diagnosed as GCA and treated more promptly.  Even following the delayed diagnosis, the loss of vision could have been avoided if the medicine she had been prescribed had been continued as specified by the optometrist. Sadly the settlement will not bring back the sight in Mrs T’s eye even though it will have helped to highlight a failing in that hospital’s system which hopefully will not be repeated.”