Widow speaks out after doctor finds grandfather who suffered fatal allergic reaction to CT scan neglected

The widow of a retired engineer who suffered a fatal allergic reaction to a CT scan says she is ‘sickened’ by hospital failings a coroner has found contributed to his death.

Grandfather David Horsman, 65, from Westhoughton, suffered a cardiac arrest after having a reaction to a routine scan at a facility at the Royal Bolton Hospital.




An inquest into his death which concluded last week heard a breakdown in communication between the radiographer carrying out the scan and the switchboard operator led to a 17-minute delay in the accident team arriving at the hospital.

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They were able to revive him, but he died the next day. The inquest heard medical evidence from independent experts that with prompt and appropriate care his death could probably have been avoided.

And after a three-day hearing which ended last week, a coroner concluded that his death was the result of an accident caused by negligence.

There was a 17-minute delay when the crash team reached David(Image: Manchester Evening News)

David visited a mobile CT scanner, owned and staffed by private firm InHealth, located in a hospital car park on March 27, 2022, for a scan which was part of the follow-up care to successful bowel cancer surgery.

He was injected with a contrast medium and underwent a scan that lasted just over a minute. However, he started to feel sick shortly after, as he began to cough and his skin turned red.

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