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Parents set to sue over baby death

The parents of a baby who died when a life-saving feeding line pierced her heart are to sue the hospital where she died.

Skye Hall-Walsh’s parents say they will pursue a civil legal claim over their daughter’s death at Newcastle’s Royal Victoria Infirmary, after a feeding-line punctured the premature baby’s heart, and doctors failed to spot the mistake.

An inquest ruled the tip of the line pierced the right ventricle of Skye’s heart, when it was meant to have been placed in a nearby vein.

The food that was meant to be pumped around her body was then forced into her heart, causing it to flood.

Skye had been born three months premature and was just nine days old when she died.

The inquest, which took place in Newcastle, was told Dr John Kelleher, the specialist paediatric registrar who inserted the line, may have wrongly measured the tube that was placed into Skye’s body, causing it to stretch into her heart.

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