Woman awarded payout after unnecessary amputation

Posted 20/01/2011

The amputation of a woman’s leg has led to the patient being awarded £10,000 after experts deemed the operation unnecessary.

Michelle Richards won her clinical negligence case relating to the actions of doctors at the Glan Cwyd Hospital in North Wales after it was discovered that the infection medical staff were trying to get rid of was not actually present in the part of her limb that was removed.

She said: “At the consultation he told me the only solution [to stop the infection spreading] was to have an amputation.”

Ms Richards had previously had a below-the-knee amputation in 1996, but when she started having problems with the remainder of her leg in 2005, healthcare professionals opted to remove more of the limb to prevent the spread of bone disease osteomyeltitis.

As it turned out it, the illness was not present in her test results.

The patient is a spina bifida sufferer, which means her spine and nervous system are not fully developed due to birth defects.

Rosamund Rhodes-Kemp, who heads the Ashtons Legal medical injury team, comments: “Your heart has to go out to anyone with a difficult pre-existing condition who then suffers a medical error. It seems a relatively modest award for the loss of a limb but it is clearly a complex medical history.”