Families of patients with severe brain damage after heart surgery as children are preparing to sue the NHS after a profoundly disabled woman won her case for compensation in the wake of the Bristol heart babies scandal.

The NHS has abandoned attempts to appeal against a landmark ruling in favour of Marianna Telles, who suffered brain damage after undergoing surgery as a newborn baby more than twenty years ago.

Ms Telles, 22, is now set to receive at least a seven-figure sum in compensation. Her family solicitor said that the ruling was highly significant as there were at least seven more cases “waiting in the wings” of adults who were brain-damaged as children.

The cases all relate to the Bristol Royal Infirmary and associated hospitals from 1984 to 1995, where surgeons carried out complex heart procedures despite warnings that death and brain-damage rates of children who underwent such surgery were twice the national average.

The scandal resulted in the largest public inquiry in the history of the NHS, which in 2001 identified at least 300 families whose children died or had suffered severe injury as a result of the incompetence of surgeons at Bristol.

Up to 80 families who lost a child after surgery at Bristol have previously settled legal cases out of court, in return for about £20,000 compensation plus costs. Ms Telles, who suffers from severe mobility and psychiatric problems which require 24-hour care, is the first of those who survived operations to go to trial.

In 1998 the General Medical Council found two surgeons, James Wisheart and Janardan Dhasmana, guilty of serious professional misconduct. Mr Wisheart was struck off and Mr Dhasmana was banned from operating on children for four years. Both surgeons had operated on Ms Telles.

Her family took the South West Strategic Health Authority to the High Court last month, claiming that doctors at the hospital were clinically negligent when treating her. After a seven-day trial, the judge ruled in Ms Telles’s favour and refused permission for the NHS Litigation Agency (NHSLA), acting for the health authority, to appeal. For two weeks the NHSLA considered applying directly to the Court of Appeal but on Wednesday confirmed it has abandoned this plan.

A hearing next month will now determine an initial payment to the family to cover immediate costs of Ms Telles’s care, and set a timetable for reaching a decision on final damages.

Laurence Vick, who acted for the family and first served papers for the case in 2005, said: “We have a young woman with severe brain damage whose mother has supported her with only limited help from the NHS and local authority. We’ve attempted to negotiate for a very long time, but without success. You can only imagine what this family has gone through.

“At last Marianna and her family know they will get the financial support she needs. I am confident we’ll be able to negotiate a settlement.”

Ms Telles’s mother, Anna Redman, previously gave evidence to the Bristol inquiry, which was highly critical of the clinical standards of the hospital’s paediatric heart surgery. Many more patients continue to live with severe brain injuries more than a decade after the botched surgery, Mr Vick, of the law firm Michelmores, said.

He added: “We’ve settled several cases out of court and there are still seven more waiting in the wings.”

A leaked memo suggested in September that the NHS as a whole was facing £4.5 billion of compensation claims over alleged blunders by midwives and doctors that have left babies suffering severe brain damage.

The Corporate Manslaughter Act, due to come into force next month, is also likely to enable more compensation cases by making it easier to prosecute companies or public bodies. In a statement, the NHSLA said that it was committed to dealing with claims relating to the Bristol scandal on their individual merits.

Fatal mistakes

— The inquiry into the deaths of babies undergoing heart surgery at Bristol Royal Infirmary (BRI) was conducted between October 1998 and July 2001

— It involved oral and written evidence from 577 witnesses and 900,000 pages of documents, including the medical records of 1,800 children

— A General Medical Council misconduct hearing had previously found at least 29 babies had died needlessly after surgery by the heart surgeon Janardan Dhasmana, above, and the medical director James Wisheart, although families claim the number of avoidable deaths was far higher

— Mr Wisheart and John Roylance, the BRI chief executive, were struck off, and Mr Dhasmana was banned from operating on children for four years

— Mr Dhasmana, who qualified from Lucknow University, India, in 1964, was accused of showing “technical incompetence” in performing a heart operation known as a ‘shunt’ procedure on Marianna Telles

— Mr Dhasmana is believed to be currently practising medicine at a hospital in the Himalayas in India

— Mr Wisheart, now retired, gave evidence defending his former colleague at the High Court

Source: www.bristol-inquiry.org.uk; Times Database,

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