A PENSIONER bled to death at the Royal Bolton Hospital after his drip became detached, an inquest heard.

James Bent’s drip tube, which was providing him with antibiotics, became detached and blood poured out of his cannula, pooling on the floor by his bed.

Health care assistant Rose Nuttall told the court how, at 8.35am on February 17, she went into 86-year-old Mr Bent’s side room to ask him what he wanted for breakfast to find him collapsed in his bed, but conscious.

The bleeding had stopped but within minutes he went into cardiac arrest and could not be resuscitated.

The inquest heard that bachelor Mr Bent, of Orchard Close, Leigh, was admitted to the Royal Bolton Hospital on January 28, suffering from diarrhoea, which meant he was placed in a single room due to fears of infection spread.

He was found to have a number of serious conditions, including heart disease plus pancreatitis and cirrhosis of the liver, thought to have been the result of a weekly bottle of rum added to his coffee.

Staff nurse Catherine Maher, who was on duty on C3 ward on the night of February 16, said Mr Bent, who set up and ran Bents Electricals in Leigh, could not sleep, pressing his call button every half an hour.

“He was frustrated and irritated. He couldn’t sleep and was angry about being in a side ward,” she said.

The last time she saw him was at 6.35am when she set up a new antibiotic drip, handing over to the day shift at 7.30am.

The court was told that patients with cannulas are usually only observed every four hours.

Susan Fearon, acting sister on C3 was one of the first into Mr Bent’s room after Mrs Nuttall found him.

“It was quite a shock. The fact that was quite distressing to us was the gentleman was awake and looking at us and in reach of his buzzer,” she said.

Deputy Coroner Alan Walsh heard how the drip tube was connected to the cannula’s three way tap by a single threaded screw, which could be easily undone.

The coroner decided that Mr Bent, who had been a vegan since his early 20s and taught himself several languages, would not have deliberately tried to harm himself and stated that he did not believe the drip had been incorrectly set up.

He recorded a narrative determination that Mr Bent, “died as a consequence of the accidental detachment of a giving set (drip tube apparatus) used to administer intravenous antibiotics from a three way tap connected to a cannula inserted into an arm vein against a background of naturally occurring and alcohol related disease.”

Speaking after the hearing Mr Bent’s nephew, Ken Atherton, said he accepted the coroner’s finding but was critical of the way his uncle was treated at the hospital before his death.

He stressed that the pensioner lost a lot of weight as a result of his false teeth being lost just hours after his admission and said requests for his food to be liquidized were ignored.

“He was never a little fellow and you could see him just shrivelling,” he said.