An obese mother who carried on eating too much after gastric bypass surgery suffocated on food which couldn’t fit into her stomach, an inquest heard.Dianne Bernadette Cooper-Clarke, 64, died after food clogged her throat and stopped her from breathing.
A U.K. woman died choking on food that wouldn’t fit in her stomach after weight-loss surgery, according to an inquest into her death. But experts say gastric bypass patients are no more likely to choke than someone who didn’t undergo the surgery.
The inquest into the December 2011 death of Dianne Bernadette Cooper-Clarke concluded the 64-year-old mother suffocated because of a backlog of food outside her stomach, which had been surgically shrunken to the size of a thumb, according to the Daily Mail.
“The tube that goes from the mouth to the stomach was swollen and food had built up all the way to the throat,” Dr. Hugh Jones, the Royal Cornwall Hospital pathologist who performed the autopsy, told the inquest, according to the U.K.’s Daily Mail. “Your esophagus is the size of a little finger, but hers was as big as her stomach. … I considered the food had blocked off her breathing, and that was the cause of death.”
via ABC News