THE devastated daughters of a much-loved pensioner say she was denied a dignified death following a horrifying series of events that spiralled after her tongue fell out following a misdiagnosis.

Patricia Hutchinson’s children say their 84-year-old mother suffered unnecessarily prior to her death at Darlington Memorial Hospital in 2015.

Determined to get justice for the woman who was their “whole world”, Darlington sisters Susan Bartle and Pauline Rissetto hope sharing their mother’s story will prevent others from suffering in the way she did.

They say GPs and hospital staff repeatedly missed opportunities to spot symptoms of temporal arteritis – the condition that led to the loss of her tongue and life-threatening complications.

The Neasham Road Surgery and the County Durham and Darlington NHS Trust have apologised for failing to diagnose the condition promptly and say lessons have been learned from the family’s tragic experience.

At least three doctors from the Neasham Road Surgery visited Ms Hutchinson after she repeatedly reported problems with her eyesight and pains in her tongue, shoulder and head.

However, the signs of temporal arteritis – which causes inflammation of blood vessels in the head - were initially missed and blood tests that could identify the condition were delayed by failures within the district nursing team.

Tell-tale signs of tongue necrosis – a known complication – were dismissed as thrush by a rheumatologist.

After weeks of suffering, a dehydrated and weak Ms Hutchinson was admitted to hospital, but by then it was too late to save her tongue, which turned black and died in her mouth.

The loss of her tongue – which had to be taped to her face at one stage – meant she could not eat and had to be fed through a tube to her stomach.

Her health deteriorated rapidly after the tube – which her daughters claim was too long - got trapped between her legs during a stay at a care home and was pulled free, spilling the contents of her stomach.

The site became infected and Ms Hutchinson’s health worsened significantly until she died in hospital in January 2015, where her family claim she was subjected to poor treatment and inadequate standards of hygiene.

Ms Bartle, who believes neglect at the hospital also contributed to the death of her daughter in the 1980s, said she arrived one day to find her mother covered “from head to foot” in her own waste.

In response to subsequent complaints, the Trust developed a new pathway for managing patients with temporal arteritis and invited Ms Hutchinson’s family to produce an awareness-raising video for staff training.

A letter from the Trust’s Executive Medical Director, Professor Chris Grey, said the condition was rare and “a difficult diagnosis to make”.

He added: “What is clear is that the severity of your mum’s illness was not recognised and on behalf of everyone in this Trust I can only apologise again for this. I believe it was clinical error rather than any deliberately negligent care.”

Ms Bartlet said: “We may never know if my mother would have died from this condition anyway, but she was not given a chance to fight it and she was given no dignity.

“We are so angry and cannot grieve properly – they have apologised and say strategies have been put in place, but they should have been there in the first place.

"This is not about money, we are not interested in compensation, we want people to learn from what has happened and our mother is priceless.

“If sharing her story can save one person’s life by making someone think about what should have been done differently, that will be justice for my mam.”

The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman partially upheld the family's complaint against the Trust , in relation to district nurses' arrangements to collect a blood sample, but did not uphold complaints against the GP practice.

A spokeswoman for the Trust said: "We would like to reiterate our very sincere condolences to Mrs Hutchinson’s family at what clearly continues to be a very difficult time for them.

"We value all patient feedback and comments and while we are not able to share the detail of individual cases, we have met with Mrs Hutchinson’s family several times to fully understand, discuss and investigate their concerns.

"The trust has since developed a new pathway for the management of patients with temporal arteritis, a very rare condition.

"We encourage anyone who is unhappy with their care to contact us as we have an open and transparent process for investigating and responding to concerns.”

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