Patient dies after burns from hospital radiator

The son of an elderly woman who died a month after being burnt when nurses put her on mattresses near a radiator to sleep, said yesterday that he is suing the NHS trust.

Lorraine Lewis, 83, of Shere, Surrey, was injured when she spent a night on mattresses placed near the radiator atthe Royal Surrey Hospital, Guildford.

Staff had put her on the makeshift bed in a room on her own because she was in the early stages of Parkinson's disease and there were fears she might harm herself if she got out of an ordinary bed at night.

Daniel Lewis, director of a legal recruitment firm, said his mother was initially taken into the hospital with a lung infection, but contracted a urinary infection which made her more confused than normal.

"I was shocked that she had been left so close to the radiator and that nothing had been put on top of it, like a towel," he said. A plastic surgeon was called in to treat the burns.