AN 81-year-old woman is suing a hospital trust after she was left with four large surgical swabs inside her for two weeks.

Margaret Draper underwent surgery to fit a pacemaker at Royal Preston Hospital on August 13, 2015.

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She suffered excessive bleeding during the procedure, which required intervention from the surgical team, and has now seeking damages from Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

An NHS investigation has found that due to insufficient training of the surgical team at the hospital, the wrong type of surgical swabs were used during the procedure to help stem the bleeding.

Further to this, the surgical team opted to leave the swabs in to help control the bleeding post-surgery, still unaware of their error.

Mrs Draper, from Chorley, was then moved to Blackpool Victoria Hospital, however due to an insufficient verbal handover by the staff at Preston, Blackpool’s staff were unaware of the surgical swabs that had been left inside the wound.

Over the next week as Mrs Draper’s condition did not improve, the decision was made to remove the pacemaker on the August 27.

It was only when this procedure was carried out that the staff at Blackpool became aware of the swabs still inside her.

She instructed specialist medical negligence lawyers at Irwin Mitchell to investigate and the trust has now admitted liability.

Mrs Draper said: “The last 15 months have been a difficult time for me and my family as a result of the failures by staff at the Royal Preston Hospital.

“Since the initial surgery, I’ve suffered with an ongoing infection and had to undergo further surgery to have the pacemaker relocated.

“As well as the physical pain and scars that I’ve been left with, my experiences have had a huge impact on me mentally and the support from my family has really helped me to get through the drawn out and stressful complaint procedure.”

Shahin Master, an expert medical negligence lawyer at Irwin Mitchell’s Manchester office, said: “Margaret is still understandably extremely upset due to the continued health issues these failings have caused.”

Mark Pugh, medical director at the trust, said: “Firstly we would like to sincerely apologise to Margaret Draper and her family for the distress caused.

“We have carried out an investigation into the matter; lessons have been learned and robust measures are being put in place.

“We cannot comment on legal proceedings however we will continue to work with Mrs Draper and her family to resolve the issue.”