A patient who was wrongly injected with local anaesthetic into a vein rather than the spine has died in a British hospital.
The patient died this morning after being in intensive care in the Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton.
The patient was undergoing major surgery on February 7th for an abdominal aortic aneurysm, a weakness in one of the body's largest blood vessels.
They were given the drug Bupivicaine which should have been given spinally after the operation to help ease the pain. It was injected by mistake into the patient's vein by a senior experienced consultant.
No details of the patient have been released at the request of the person's family.
The consultant who made the error has been suspended and Brighton NHS Trust are not giving any more information.
The technique involves inserting a needle into the spine and passing a tiny catheter into the epidural space in the back, through which relatively large amounts of local anaesthetic can be administered to numb the area and reduce pain.
PA