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Transplant patient hanged herself after being told liver donor had hepatitis B
Mother-of-three walked out of hospital on learning she must take pills for rest of her life
A TRANSPLANT patient was found hanged on Hampstead Heath after learning her new liver had been donated by a hepatitis B sufferer.
Mother-of-three Tracy Manning, 44, was discovered by police in secluded woodland near Hampstead ponds, off East Heath Road, in November last year.
She had been told she would have to take pills for the rest of her life after the transplant.
An inquest at St Pancras Coroner’s Court heard on Thursday how Ms Manning had already attempted suicide while under the supervision of psychiatrists at the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead.
Mrs Manning needed a “super-urgent” liver transplant after taking a massive paracetamol overdose on the Heath in August.
The hospital had hours to find a new liver that fitted Ms Manning’s tissue make-up – and did not have time to warn her or her family that the one they found was from a former hepatitis B carrier, the inquest heard.
Experts said the transplant meant she was infected with the antibody and not the virus, but Ms Manning was told she would have to take medication every day for rest of her life to keep the virus at bay.
“That was the turning point,” her husband Colin told the inquest.
“She seemed to be coping fine. She had got over the previous suicide attempt. But then she found out the liver she received had hepatitis B.
“We knew she wasn’t going to get hepatitis B, but it was still a hepatitis B liver and she was given the tablets for it. She wasn’t happy with that at all.”
At the time of the earlier suicide attempt she believed thyroid cancer, which she had overcome three years earlier, had returned after eavesdropping on a nurse’s conversation at the Royal Free about another patient and believing they were talking about her.
Royal Free liver transplant co-ordinator Diane Dobson said the hospital, which carried out transplants in similar circumstances four or five times a year, normally explained to the patient and family about the need to take medication.
“But given Tracy’s super-urgent situation we couldn’t explain it to her,” she added. “We didn’t contact the parents or husband.”
Ms Manning’s mother, Noreen Kendall, received a phone call from her daughter on November 5, the day she was found on the Heath. “She told me she was going to die a terrible death and asked if I would help her,” she told the inquest. “She needed help.”
Ms Manning, from Eastwood, Essex, walked out of a ward at the Royal Free 15 minutes before her mother arrived at the hospital. She left through the front entrance wearing her bright pink hospital gown.
Ward sister Anita O’Connor said: “We instigated a missing patients policy. All staff were bleeped. We had an emergency meeting. We went to check the CCTV downstairs but that didn’t give any results.”
St Pancras coroner Dr Andrew Reid said: “She absconded from the hospital and went to a secluded place away from the public gaze where she knew she would not be found. I am sure that Tracy Manning took her own life.”
He added that the hepatitis B donor liver was no threat to Ms Manning’s life because the carrier had been inoculated. Verdict: suicide. |
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