Girl died during spleen operation

Bethany suffered from a hereditary condition called spherocytosis

A girl died during an operation to remove her spleen when surgeons used a new piece of equipment without her parents' knowledge, an inquest heard.

Bethany Bowen, five, from Cricklade, Wiltshire, "collapsed" during the procedure at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford on 27 July 2006.

A new type of bladed coring device was used and severed a major blood vessel.

Bethany's father Richard Bowen said he and his wife assumed the morcellator used was a standard piece of equipment.

Oxford Coroner's Court heard that Bethany suffered from a hereditary condition called spherocytosis - it involves the body producing the wrong-shaped red blood cells which are attacked and destroyed by the spleen.

The condition causes anaemia which can only be cured by removing the spleen.

We absolutely and completely trusted the people involved Richard Bowen

Mr Bowen said that despite her condition Bethany was a "happy and lively" little girl who had a "whale of a time" during her first year at school.

The court heard that one of Bethany's two brothers also had the condition and had his spleen successfully removed when he was two years old.

Mr and Mrs Bowen had signed a consent form but the operation went wrong and Mr Bowen and his wife were told by doctors that "they had cut through a blood vessel and she had died".

He told the inquest: "It was too much of a shock to take in."

Internal injuries

A few days after the operation Mr Bowen sat down with the surgeons to discuss what had happened.

He said: "They described what they had used and while they were using the morcellator Beth had collapsed.

When asked by coroner Dr Richard Whittington if they would have given their consent if they knew a different method was to be used, Mr Bowen said: "We absolutely and completely trusted the people involved.

"If they had said they were using a new piece of equipment they had never used before, that was a different matter."

Mrs Bowen said they had agreed to the surgery on the terms that there was no other option or choice available.

Dr Stephen Gould, a consultant paediatric pathologist who carried out the post-mortem examination told the inquest that he had never before seen the type internal injuries he found in Bethany's body.

He said her death was "associated with her surgery" but in his opinion the blood loss was not sufficient to have caused it.

He said: "Surgery was a trigger to an event, but we are not clear what that event was."

The inquest continues.