Inquest probes whether man's death at Blackpool Victoria Hospital was due to wrongly fitted air tube

Graham Hargreaves had been admitted to the Blackpool hospital to have his right lung removed because of a cancerous growth, an inquest heard today (August 23).

But after the operation on December 30, 2019, seemed to have gone well, he started to feel ill due to the effects of a fall in blood pressure.

It was decided Mr Hargreaves, from Rossendale, should undergo another operation – a video assisted thoracic procedure, to deal with the problem.

However, before the operation was carried out, Mr Hargreaves suffered a cardiac arrest in the hospital’s anaesthetic room and died the same day, on January 4 2020.

Mark Sissons, the pathologist based at the hospital, had recorded a cause of death due to acute cardiac failure – a combination of hypertension and degeneration of the mitral valve.

However, at the time he was not aware of an issue in the hospital’s anaesthetics room prior to his death, which later led to an internal investigation over whether an air tube had been attached properly during intubation.

The question over the application of the tube and a potentially deadly loss of oxygen is at the centre of the inquest.

Asked by Louise Rae, assistant coroner for Blackpool and Fylde, if he could tell post mortem if there had been such an issue, he said: “No I could not comment at all on any anaesthetic problem.

"I have since heard questions about the tube being in the wrong place but there was nothing I saw to indicate that.”

The inquest continues tomorrow (August 24)