One woman from Reading has enlisted the aid of personal injury solicitors to make a medical negligence claim on behalf of her husband after he sustained life changing brain damage from a surgical procedure, experts say.
Lower Earley’s Frank Llewellyn had been admitted to Oxford’s John Radcliffe Hospital for an operation to excise a portion of his tongue due to cancer, according to personal injury compensation experts writing for the Reading Post newspaper. However, in the wake of the procedure, Mr Llewellyn’s neck began to swell, causing him to have difficulty breathing and to develop a cough, culminated by suffering a heart attack.
The rapid deterioration of the man’s condition necessitated a consultant surgeon to perform an emergency tracheotomy to save Mr Llewellyn’s life and allow him to breath once more. However, the incident left the injured man with brain damage, causing him to be transferred ultimately to a specialised nursing home in order to undergo rehabilitation.
Now, Mr Llewellyn’s wife, Lynn, has brought a compensation claim against the NHS Trust for Oxford University Hospitals on the grounds that medical staff diagnosed her husband’s neck swelling incorrectly. This misdiagnosis was the cause of the airway obstruction that led to his brain damage, Lynn claims, and while the NHS Trust has given an admission of breaching its duty to Mr Llewellyn, neither side has yet to agree to a compensation amount to be paid to the brain damaged man.
In related medical negligence cases, compensation payouts can be in the six to seven figures for long-lasting, debilitating injuries such as brain damage. If Mr Llewellyn will need continuous care for the rest of his life, his compensation payments will go up accordingly, experts say.