Payout for back surgery 
errors

A mother has been awarded five-figure compensation after a screw was incorrectly inserted during spinal surgery leaving her with permanent nerve damage.

Caroline Bielby, 36, from Beverley, experienced the “most excruciating pain” as she was passed from “pillar to post” druing the two years following the operation.

After seeing 30 clinicians, a surgeon eventually told her a screw had been put in at a different angle to the others during the operation in 2010 and had been rubbing away at nerves causing pain and loss of feeling in her arm and leg.

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Mrs Bielby had to have further surgery to remove the screw in March, 2012.

Mrs Bielby, who is still unable to work, said: “The last few years have been a complete nightmare and I am still in pain and experience weakness and numbness in my leg and foot which will never go away due to the damage to my nerves.

“I don’t feel like the same person as I was before the operation, but I do try to remain positive.”

Mrs Bielby first suffered back pain while pregnant with her first daughter in 1999.

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She was told she would probably need surgery for degeneration of the discs in her spine and eight years later had the back operation at Castle Hill Hospital.

However a sharp pain in her left leg and toe failed to settle and eventually she lost feeling all the way up to two inches below the knee cap.

After instructing Irwin Mitchell lawyers, Hull and East Yorkshire Hospital NHS Trust admitted lapses, including failing to arrange further imaging after an X-ray was performed on April 29 2010, two days after the operation.

The trust said: “We understand this must have been a distressing time for Mrs Bielby and apologise for the pain and distress caused.”

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