AN ELDERLY cancer patient died when the wrong part of her bowel was stapled shut during an operation at Great Western Hospital.

Florence Woodroffe, 81, from Burbage, died of multi organ failure on May 17, 2008, after her overwhelmed bowel split leading to peritonitis.

Sitting at Swindon Civic Offices, Swindon and Wiltshire Coroner David Ridley recorded a narrative verdict into her death.

“I see no reason not to adopt the pathologist’s findings that Florence Woodroffe died of multi-organ failure caused by faecal peritonitis as a result of bowel obstruction caused by palliative surgery.”

Mrs Woodroffe was diagnosed with rectal cancer in January 2008 and underwent surgery to re-direct her bowel.

But an infection and prolapse stoma caused leakage and discomfort so she returned to her consultant gastrointestinal surgeon Richard Glass and asked if there was anything he could do.

Mr Glass told the inquest that while abdominal surgery would normally be the answer, he and registrar Paul Pickworth agreed that due to Mrs Woodroffe’s history of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, the operation would be too risky.

Instead the surgeon, who had worked for the Swindon NHS Trust since 1987, attempted to reverse the prolapse with an end colonoscopy – an operation that would pass faecal matter out of the bowel and into a colostomy bag.

Mr Glass said: “I should have perhaps said I couldn’t do anything, that it was inoperable but I wanted to help her. I made a decision which was sadly incorrect but that was the decision on that day.”

Because surgeons were not able to open Mrs Woodroffe’s abdomen, Mr Glass had to resort to keyhole surgery and in the process accidentally stapled the proximal bowel end and not the distal end.

He was unable to pass a camera through into the bowel to aid the operation because of the cancer.

The blunder was realised just days later when Mrs Woodroffe’s abdomen appeared swollen and the colostomy bag had not been used. Mr Glass called for an x-ray and full body scan and Mrs Woodroffe was sent for corrective surgery.

Despite showing initial signs of improvement following the operation, on May 16 the elderly patient suddenly deteriorated and just a day later she died.

Concluding the inquest, Mr Ridley stressed that the coroner’s court was not a court of blame.