A 77-year-old woman died during heart surgery at Scunthorpe General Hospital after a ten-minute power cut prevented surgeons from using vital equipment, a coroner's report has revealed.
Jean Dye was undergoing a procedure to treat heart disease on 7 September 2020 when a sudden and unexpected loss of electricity occurred. Surgeons were in the process of repairing a tear in an artery, a rare but recognised complication, when the power cut disabled real-time X-ray equipment needed to insert stents.
Once an engineer restored power, the stenting was completed, but Mrs Dye failed to recover and was pronounced dead. Senior coroner Paul Smith stated that on the balance of probabilities, she would have survived but for the power loss.
The report noted that no clear cause of the outage was identified, though a fault within the circuitry was suspected. It also warned that similar electrical issues could pose a risk of future deaths, as staff were unaware of the cause and had to wait for an engineer to reset the circuit.
An NHS spokesperson expressed deepest sympathies to Mrs Dye's family and said the organisation is carefully considering the Prevention of Future Deaths report, to which it must respond by 28 August 2025.
