£12,000 obtained for widower whose wife died from a pulmonary embolism

Posted 02/07/2013

Trefine Maynard, a solicitor in Ashtons Legal’s medical injury team, has obtained compensation for a Suffolk man whose wife died having suffered a pulmonary embolism. She was in hospital at the time of her death, having undergone a hip replacement operation the previous week. Ms Maynard explains: “Our main concern was that despite prescribing the application of thrombo-embolic (TED) stockings, these were not used. The failure to do so even when these are recommended by NICE guidelines and been prescribed, failed to protect my client’s wife against the recognised risk of blood clot (DVT). She developed a clot and this resulted in a fatal pulmonary embolism when the clot travelled to her lung. A further protection against developing DVT is to ensure the patient is kept properly hydrated and this was not done. This was another factor that may have contributed to her death.Her widower’s motivation in bringing the claim was not the money. His aim was to draw attention to the fact that his wife might still be alive if her post-operative care had been better and to encourage the hospital to review its procedures to ensure that the same thing does not happen to anyone else.”