WINNIPEG — A medical examiner says a Winnipeg woman who died after being discharged from hospital had a number of undetected blood clots in her legs.
Dr. Susan Phillips told an inquest one of the clots travelled to an artery between Heather Brenan’s heart and lungs and lodged there, causing her death.
Phillips conducted the autopsy on Brenan, who collapsed on her doorstep in January 2012, after being sent home from hospital in a taxi.
The inquest is examining how medical staff at Seven Oaks Hospital treated Brenan.
Phillips says many of the clots were recent and may have developed during Brenan’s three-day hospital stay.
But she added they were in her deep veins and could have been hard to detect.
Phillips says the 68-year-old Brenan suffered from a number of chronic conditions including morbid obesity, gout and hypertension