Woman bled to death after hip replacement operation

Christine and Peter Booker celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary shortly before she died

A 79-year-old woman bled to death following a hip operation after being rushed to a hospital which lacked a service to save her, a coroner has said.

Christine Booker from Wareham died on 24 February 2023, the day after her hip replacement.

Coroner Brendan Allen said she was initially transferred to Dorset County Hospital in Dorchester, which had no out-of-hours interventional radiology (an imaging procedure), before being sent to Royal Bournemouth Hospital.

In a Prevention of Future Deaths report, he said patients in west Dorset faced a "potentially considerable and significant delay in the provision of urgent and life-saving treatment".

Mrs Booker suffered a large amount of bleeding when a surgeon at the private Winterbourne Hospital in Dorchester drilled into her hip socket, the coroner said.

She initially appeared to recover but her blood pressure plummeted about three hours after the operation, her family added.

After resuscitation efforts, she was transferred to Dorset County Hospital.

Mrs Booker's daughter Simone Evans (left) said health care in Dorset was too centralised

However, she then had to be flown 27 miles (44km) by air ambulance to Bournemouth, arriving shortly after 22:00 GMT, the family said.

She underwent embolisation - a procedure to stop the blood flow - but died the following day from haemorrhagic shock, the inquest recorded.

Writing to Dorset County Hospital, the coroner said the lack of an out-of-hours service in Dorchester exposed patients to an "increased risk of death".

The hospital told the BBC it would respond in due course.

Mrs Booker's husband Peter, 84, who celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary with her shortly before she died, said "a lot of mistakes were made".

He added: "It was avoidable, as far as I understand. Nothing was done to rectify the problem until too late."

Her daughter Simone Evans said: "If you centralise [health services] for a whole county... it's miles to travel. I agree with the coroner."