DOCTORS at the John Radcliffe Hospital have been unable to pinpoint why a man died after falling down an escalator in an Oxfordshire department store.
Nigel Harrison, 65, died at the Headington hospital on March 10 while being treated following a fall at the Debenhams store in Banbury four days earlier.
His inquest at Oxfordshire Coroner’s Court heard that he died of a heart attack brought on by kidney failure, but doctors treating him remain uncertain what caused this.
Robert Handley, a trauma and orthopaedic consultant at the JR, told assistant coroner Nicholas Graham that Mr Harrison had been drinking liquids and passing urine without problem when he was first admitted.
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He said: “There was nothing to alarm the nurses. On arrival he didn’t have renal failure so something had to cause his kidneys to stop over those three days.
“You can get damage to the kidneys when you damage a muscle and it releases substances into the blood system that the kidneys cannot handle – but that’s only high on the agenda when someone loses a leg or there is a lot of muscle damage.”
Spinal surgeon Mr Dominique Rotherfluh said Mr Harrison was “progressing well” and doctors were planning to discharge him.
Mr Harrison’s inquest on Thursday heard that the escalator had been checked over after the incident, but no defects had been found.
Mr Graham recorded a narrative verdict that Mr Harrison died of cardiac arrest caused by renal failure but that it was not possible to determine what caused this.
Mr Harrison, from Brackley, is the second person to die this year after falling down an escalator in the same store.
Former TV director Christopher Barry, 88, from Hook Norton, died after a fall in February.
Mr Graham recorded a verdict of accidental death at an inquest in June.
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