NHS chiefs tell grandmother, 61, she's 'too old' for £5,000 life-saving heart surgery
A woman of 61 was refused a routine heart operation by a hard-up NHS trust for being too old.
Dorothy Simpson suffers from an irregular heartbeat and is at increased risk of a stroke. But health chiefs refused to allow the procedure which was recommended by her specialist.
The school secretary was stunned by the ruling.
"I can't believe that at 61 I'm too old for this operation," she said.
"A friend has had exactly the same thing done and it has changed his life.
"I feel as though I've been put out to grass and surely deserve better than this."
Mrs Simpson, of Leake, near Thirsk, North Yorkshire, was diagnosed three years ago with atrial fibrillation, a condition suffered by a million people in the UK.
It can cause palpitations, heart failure, strokes, shortness of breath, chest pains and blackouts.
Drugs have had limited success and her hospital consultant decided the most effective treatment would be a procedure known as a catheter ablation.
An electrode on the tip of a long wire is manoeuvred through a vein or artery and destroys abnormal heart tissue causing the rhythm problems.
National guidelines set no age limit for the procedure, which is usually carried out under local anaesthetic and has a better than 75 per cent chance of curing the condition.
Her consultant's application for Mrs Simpson to have the operation was rejected in December.
The North Yorkshire and York Primary Care Trust is said to have cited her age as one of the reasons for refusal.
Mrs Simpson said: "'If I lived in another part of the country there wouldn't be a problem...
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