Tragedy of heart scan

A mother told today how her young daughter died from a heart condition – soon after a hospital insisted she was healthy.

Jennifer Pearce, aged 19, from Harborne, was a second year student at Manchester University when she died suddenly last October.

But mum Sandra has told how just nine months earlier Selly Oak Hospital had carried out an ECG scan of Jennifer’s heart and nurse then told the family it was normal.  They did not see a doctor. 

Ms Pearce, who is divorced from Jennifer’s father, has since had independent medical expert Professor Bill McKenna from the Heart Hospital in Westmoreland Street, London look at the ECG report.  He has told her that rather than showing Jennifer’s heart to be normal the scan report actually reveals a potentially fatal abnormality.

Ms Pearce, a customer services manager at the Johnson Apparel Master textile company in Perry Barr, said: “All we know is that Jennifer went to bed and never woke up.

“But in the January before she died she’d had a minor car crash in Birmingham and I suggested we go to casualty at Selly Oak Hospital because she had chest pains.

“After an ECG was carried out a nurse told us it was normal.  She said we may have to wait up to four hours to be seen by a doctor, so we decided to leave as there was nothing wrong.

“I’ve since had an independent opinion on that ECG and been told that it contained an abnormality which could be fatal but could have been treated.

“The two months before Jennifer died she went to see our GP because she was getting heart palpitations but that was just put down to stress.  It is such a tragedy that warning signs were there but no-one saw them.”

An inquest is due to be held in June.

A University Hospital Birmingham NHS Trust spokeswoman said: “An ECG is looked at immediately by a doctor in order to establish whether the patient has a life threatening condition such as a heart attack or major heart rhythm changes.  Miss Pearce’s ECG did not show any such changes.  But following a constructive meeting with the family, we are reviewing procedures for further examination of the results of patients who leave the accident and emergency department without being seen by a doctor.”

Ms Pearce’s younger daughter Rebecca, 12, who is a pupil at Blue Coat School in Edgbaston has now undergone tests in case she also has a similar heart defect but has been given the all clear.

The family were at Blue Coat, which is also Jennifer’s old school, to see a bench dedicated to their late daughter.

Ms Pearce received backing from the charity Cardiac Risk in the Young which is campaigning for a change in the law to provide checks on people whose relatives have died from rare heart problems.