A five-year-old girl died during an operation when a trainee surgeon used an unfamiliar piece of equipment without her parents’ knowledge, an inquest heard yesterday.

Bethany Bowen died after the morcellator, a coring device with a blade, cut through a major blood vessel during the operation to remove her spleen.

Richard Bowen, her father, told the hearing that the first he and his wife had heard that surgeons were using a new piece of equipment was in the days after Bethany’s death.

Richard Whittington, the coroner, asked Mr Bowen if he would have given his consent if he knew a different surgical method was to be used during the operation in July 2006 at the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford.

He replied: “We absolutely and completely trusted the people involved. If they had said they were using new equipment they had never used before, that was a different matter. You would think, ‘It is a new piece of equipment - why are they using it now?’.”

Stephen Gould, a consultant paediatric pathologist who carried out the postmortem examination, told Oxford Coroner’s Court that he had never before seen the type of internal injuries he found in Bethany’s body. He could not give an accurate cause of death, adding later that the aorta could have been twisted and torn.

He said that Kakina Lakhoo, the hospital’s consultant paediatric surgeon, told him that the most likely cause of trauma was the morcellator. He added that he had never heard of the device.

Bethany, who lived with her parents and two brothers in Cricklade, Wilt-shire, suffered from spherocytosis, a hereditary condition. It involves the body producing the wrong-shaped red blood cells, which are attacked and destroyed by the spleen. The anaemia it causes can be cured only by removing the spleen.

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 inquest heard that her brother, William, also had the condition and had his spleen operation when he was 2. Mr Bowen said he had assumed that the same surgeon who had carried out William’s operation would conduct Bethany’s. The inquest heard, however, that William Sherwood, a trainee surgeon, carried out the procedure on July 27 last year, despite having had no substantial training in using the morcellator device.

The inquest continues.

Explore Health

• Expert Advice

• Health Features

• Mental Health

• Alternative Medicine

• Child Health

• Health Club