AN ANGRY Bexleyheath woman has described the loss of hospital records relating to her mother's misdiagnosis and death as “suspicious”.

Teresa Greig is desperate to discover how staff at Queen Mary's Hospital, Sidcup, lost all medical records relating to her mother's time there.

Bone cancer sufferer Ada Barthorpe, 85, from Welling, was misdiagnosed with arthritis in September, 1998 and for a year did not receive proper treatment for the killer disease despite screaming with pain and suffering dramatic weight loss.

Four weeks before she died on October 26, 1999, the family found out the grandmother of three was suffering from bone cancer and she was finally given proper pain control.

Now Mrs Greig says she is “furious” the hospital has lost all medical records and is demanding an explanation.

Mrs Greig, 46, of Church Road, said: “Words cannot describe how upset and angry the family is.”

The trauma has been so severe several family members have had to undergo counselling in order to recover from the stress of that year.

Mrs Greig added: “For a whole year, my mother was in so much pain and she lost a lot of weight.

“She went from being quite a large woman to being skeletal and looking like someone who had come out of Belsen. And doctors at Queen Mary's Hospital refused to listen to us.

“We always felt as though we were making a fuss when we said there was something else wrong with her.”

Mrs Greig says she hoped, by obtaining the medical records, she would be able to find out how such a tragic misdiagnosis could happen.

She went on: “But after four months of constant calls and letters, I have been told the records are lost and I want to know why.”

A spokesman for the hospital said the family had been briefed about circumstances in hospital at the time of the death from medical notes.

However, despite “exhaustive searches” these records are now missing. The hospital said the search for the records was continuing.