Harrogate hospital trust admits breach of duty after family raised questions after much loved grandmother's death

Angela Laybourn was admitted to Harrogate General Hospital in January 2022, after suffering from lack of appetite and dehydration for around a week.

Blood tests showed she was suffering from metabolic acidosis – a build-up of acid in the body.

However, this was not documented when she was assessed on a ward, an NHS investigation report found.

Doctors believed Mrs Laybourn, who had a history of kidney stones, had sepsis caused by a water infection.

Mrs Laybourn, from Ripon, was wrongly sent home three days after being admitted. However, she was readmitted to Harrogate General Hospital two days later. She was incoherent and disorientated.

Further blood tests indicating metabolic acidosis weren’t acted upon. She died aged 62 less than two days after her re-admission.

An inquest into her death found she died from sepsis – where the body attacks itself in response to an infection – and metabolic acidosis.

A coroner recorded a narrative conclusion ruling that “the significance of the metabolic acidosis was not recognised or treated as such.”

Mrs Laybourn was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1999 and within 18 months she was paralysed from the neck down. She had surgery in December 2021 to try and remove kidney stones.

However, doctors were unable to remove all of the stones because of the complexity of the procedure.

Mrs Laybourn’s husband David who was represented by Irwin Mitchell solicitors, said the family only discovered that that she had metabolic acidosis when they saw the death certificate.

They had not been allowed to visit while she was in hospital because of Covid-19 restrictions and communication had been poor with the family constantly chasing for updates.

Mr Laybourn, who was carer for his wife for 15 years, said no staff asked about her condition or needs.

He said: “We just felt let down that no one had picked up on this and that Angela could have been treated for this. I miss her all the time. The loss of Angela has created an emptiness in my life which will never be filled.

"All I can hope for is that by speaking out improvements in care can be made as I wouldn’t want others to go through the pain our family is.”

Following legal submissions by Irwin Mitchell, the trust admitted, that on the balance of probability, with appropriate treatment to correct metabolic acidosis, her death on January 24 2022 would have been prevented. Dr Jacqueline Andrews, Executive Medical Director at the Harrogate trust, said: “We failed to deliver the level of care Mrs Laybourn and her family should have been able to expect and for this we would like to sincerely apologise.

“We are committed to learning from what has happened and are implementing new systems and processes to reduce the likelihood of important blood test results being missed to ensure we do all we can to prevent such incidents from occurring in the future.”