Legal 'first' as mother wins surgery battle

Hazel Kent took her fight to the High Court after she was refused the operation by her local primary care trust (PCT).

The 40-year-old was denied the life-saving treatment despite her weight ballooning to nearly 16 stone and reaching a size 20.

The divorcee had already paid for one operation in September 2001 and saw her weight plummet from 17-and-a-half stone to 10 stone, making her a size 12.

But two-and-a-half years later the gastric band came loose and had to be removed to prevent Mrs Kent, of Bracknell, Berkshire, contracting blood poisoning.

Despite being given appetite-suppressing drugs, Mrs Kent's weight rocketed after the gastric band was removed.

East Berkshire PCT refused to pay for a second, more permanent, gastric bypass, which cost between 8,000 and 15,000 each time.

Mrs Kent launched her own fight for the PCT to reverse its decision but when this failed she employed McCool Patterson Hemsi solicitors to take her claim to the High Court.

Mrs Kent has now won her battle after the PCT decided not to contest the judicial review in the High Court and fund her treatment. She hopes to have the surgery by Christmas.

"The result was better than we could have hoped for," she said. "I don't want to look forward to being like my father who has diabetes and all the health problems in old age associated with being obese all your life.

"I have got an allotment and grow my own vegetables so it's not as though I eat unhealthily, it's just that I eat too much.

"I am just looking forward to only eating two mouthfuls of food and not wishing that I hadn't eaten such huge quantities."

Judicial reviews can be used to question a decision by any public body which interprets or imposes statutory regulations and often encompass significant areas of government policy such as human rights, the handling of British terror suspects or planning decisions, including the third runway at Heathrow airport.

They are also used by individual campaigners seeking clarification on a particular issue.

Mrs Kent's solicitor, Oliver Wright, said: "I believe this is the first time a judicial review has been used for someone seeking a gastric bypass. There is no other recorded case of it.

"This operation is going to make Mrs Kent go back down to a size 12 and so she is not going to get heart disease, Type 2 diabetes and all those things she will get if she continues as she is and which will all cost the NHS a fortune.

"The problem is that PCTs work on a yearly budget so they see the cost of such operations as 8,000 this year but they don't see how much they could save in future years."

A gastric bypass works by making the stomach smaller and allows food to bypass part of the small intestine. It results in fewer calories being absorbed into the body and so the patient loses weight.

A gastric band restricts the flow of food stuff in to the stomach, tricking the patient's brain in to thinking the whole stomach is full when it is not. Unlike a gastric bypass, it is not a permanent procedure and the band can be removed.