Patient in coma after drug blunder

The hospital is unsure whether it was "human or machine error"

A 55-year-old nurse is in a coma after being given an insulin overdose while recovering from a life-saving liver transplant.

A spokesman for Birmingham's Queen Elizabeth Hospital said it had issued an apology to the family of Teresita Cruz, a diabetic from Leicester.

We have apologised to the family unreservedly

Hospital spokeswoman

A spokeswoman said the hospital accepted what had happened, but was not sure how it had occurred.

She said: "During the course of her treatment after the transplant it appears that she had more insulin than she should have done.

"We have launched an inquiry to find out if that was a human error or a machine error and we have apologised to the family unreservedly."

Ms Cruz is understood to have undergone the transplant operation at the hospital, where she is still being treated, about two weeks ago.

The incident follows a series of hospital blunders across the country which have either put patients' lives at risk, or resulted in their death.

Paralysis

Last month 18-year-old Wayne Jowett died at a Nottingham hospital after a cancer drug was injected into his spine instead of a vein

He was killed by a slow, creeping paralysis that eventually stopped his heart.

Donna Horn died eight years after a hospital mistake

Managers at Queen's Medical Centre launched an inquiry into the blunder and two junior doctors were suspended.

His death came just 24 hours after an inquest into the death of a female patient who took eight years to die, after being injected with vincristine in the spine.

Donna Horn, of Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, was just 15 when the mistake occurred - she was left paralysed from the neck down.

The coroner at her case called for changes to syringe design to make another such tragedy impossible.