Richard Smith represented the successful defendant NHS Trust at a trial in the High Court in which the claimant alleged that she had suffered injury as the result of a delay in surgical treatment of symptoms of Cauda Equina Syndrome. The Trust had admitted that it had breached the duty of care owed to the claimant by failing to perform an MRI scan when she presented to A&E with urinary symptoms. However, the Judge accepted the Defendant’s case that, as the MRI scan taken a day later did not show compression of the Cauda Equina, the claimant could not prove that earlier surgery to decompress her lumbar spine would have led to a better outcome than the operation that was actually performed.
Importantly, the Judge rejected the claimant’s case that Cauda Equina Syndrome is simply a clinical diagnosis that did not require radiological confirmation. His Lordship accepted the evidence of the defendant’s experts that MRI is the gold standard tool to identify compression of the cauda equina nerve roots, without which emergency surgery is not mandated.
Richard was instructed by Angus Buchanan at DAC Beachcroft, acting on behalf of Rotherham NHS Foundation Trust and NHS Resolution.
