King's / Queen's Bench Division of the High Court

KB-2023-001134 - [2025] EWHC 2121 (KB)

Fecha: 08-Ago-2025

Geraint Webb KC Introduction

Geraint Webb KC:

Introduction

This is a judgment in relation to three preliminary issues in a clinical negligence action. An anonymity order has been made, pursuant to which the Claimant is to be referred to as HQA and the Claimant’s husband and litigation friend as HQK.

The Claimant was born with congenital heart issues. She underwent elective open-heart surgery on 3 May 2022, when she was 25 years of age. The surgery was performed by Mr Mohamed Nassar, a Consultant in Paediatric and Adult Congenital Cardiac Surgery, at the Freeman Hospital, Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

It is common ground that during the course of cutting through the sternum, a procedure known as a sternotomy, Mr Nassar unintentionally cut the wall of the Claimant’s aorta, causing catastrophic haemorrhaging. It took around 20 minutes to establish sucker bypass and 24 minutes to establish full cardiopulmonary bypass during which time the Claimant sustained a serious hypoxic brain injury. As a result of that injury the Claimant lacks litigation capacity, as confirmed by an expert report from Professor Ann Mortimer, Consultant Psychiatrist, dated April 2025.

There are three key allegations of negligence:

The Claimant contends that the consenting procedure was inadequate and occurred too late. It is claimed that the Claimant would have sought a second opinion and postponed her surgery had an earlier and appropriate consenting process been undertaken by the Defendant and she would have opted for a variant of the procedure to expose and prepare relevant femoral vessels in advance of the sternotomy to facilitate the establishment of cardiopulmonary bypass in the event of injury to the aorta;

The Claimant alleges that the pre-operative planning/preparation and management of the risks of injury to the aorta were inadequate, particularly in respect of the steps taken to mitigate the consequences of the known risk of aortic injury. Appropriate mitigation would have included exposing relevant femoral vessels in advance of the sternotomy as set out in (a) above. It is contended that this breach of duty resulted in unnecessary delay in establishing cardiopulmonary bypass;

It is alleged that the injury to the aorta was itself a result of negligence on the part of Mr Nassar when performing the sternotomy.