A HOSPITAL consultant recommended a woman was given penicillin-based antibiotics without seeing her notes or checking whether she was allergic to the drug, an inquest heard.

Former Huddersfield woman Teresa Innes, 38, went into a coma in September 2001 after she was given penicillin ahead of a minor operation to an infected insect bite on her leg.

At the inquest into her death, consultant general surgeon John Griffith told Bradford Coroner's Court that he recommended she was given the drug without asking whether she was allergic to penicillin.

Ms Innes, of Turnhill Grove, Bradford, suffered an anaphylactic shock, which stopped her heart for a few minutes, resulting in a coma.

The former care worker died on August 9, 2003, after a judge gave permission for Bradford Royal Infirmary to end artificial feeding.

Mr Griffith said none of her notes were available to him during his "business ward round" at 8pm on September 24, 2001. He did not see any bright red allergy band on her wrist.

He told the inquest he now thought two student nurses who were "clerking" Ms Innes in to the ward may have had her notes and were preparing the band while he carried out his round.

The inquest heard that no one who saw Ms Innes when she was "clerked in" - either in the hospital's accident and emergency department or on the ward - attended the ward round on September 24, 2001.

Mr Griffith, who was also the risk incident co-ordinator for general surgery, said Ms Innes was the "first and most straight-forward patient" he saw during his round.

He said he told her the operation to drain the abscess on her thigh that night had to be postponed until the next morning.

Mr Griffith, 41, said: "Her notes were not located in the ward folder where they were usually kept.

"To my knowledge, Teresa had been clerked in and admitted by nursing staff, and both those people will have ascertained her allergies.

"In any of the hospitals I've trained in over 15 years, there's never been the policy for a surgeon to obtain the allergy status of any patient.

"It is now, since this incident, my routine."

The hearing continues.