A hospital trust has admitted causing a 12-month delay in diagnosing a patient’s liver cancer and agreed an out-of-court damages settlement with his widow.
The patient, from Hampshire, was under the care of Portsmouth Hospitals University NHS Trust for liver disease but was not recalled for vital blood tests and scans as he should have been in January 2018.
Further appointments were then missed in May and November before he was admitted to the Queen Alexandra Hospital as an emergency in May 2019 with abdominal pains.
It was subsequently found that he had a 3cm tumour and bleeding in his liver and he then underwent surgery at Southampton General Hospital in August of that year to remove the cancer.
He was readmitted to hospital later that month with sepsis, and the cancer later retuned. Soon after he was told he had around a year to live, and he died on New Year’s Day in 2021, aged 86.
In The News: Portsmouth News