A couple came home from a trip to the shop to find the builder they employed to work on their home dead on their driveway.
Alper Guler was working on the house on Cornwall Avenue in Blackpool on the morning of Saturday, May 7, two days after he had been to see his GP. The 41-year-old, originally from Turkey, had visited his GP two days before with pains in the left side of his chest and breathlessness.
Despite the symptoms being those associated with an impending heart attack, Alper reported he had suffered from chest pains for a number of years, the doctor thought he was suffering from heartburn and was prescribed indigestion medication when Alper noticed he noticed the pain more when he ate spring onions.
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At an inquest at Blackpool Town Hall this week Dr Sameer Shaktawatm the pathologist who conducted the post-mortem after Alper's death, said he had found scarring on the walls of the left ventricle of the heart which indicated Alper had previously suffered at least three previous heart attacks, Lancs Live reports.
The pathologist said: "One of the arteries supplying blood to the heart showed extensive narrowing."
He added: "It was very blocked and he had a massive heart attack. This isn't the heart you would expect to find in a 41-year-old man. There were a lot of blockages and evidence of previous cardiac events."
The pathologist also advised the family of Alper, who had flown to the UK from Turkey for the inquest, to get checked out for genetic heart conditions, despite Alper being a smoker and slightly overweight.
On the morning of Thursday, May 5, two days before his death, Alper called his GP at the Arnold Medical Centre on St Anne's Road in Blackpool describing his symptoms, with Dr Parvathi Shajil asking the contractor to come into the surgery. Alper, of Egerton Road, reported pain in his left arm but Dr Shajil said she "interpreted these as two different sources of pain".
She arranged for him to have a chest x-ray within a few weeks and sent him home with medication for heartburn. Assistant coroner Patrick Cassidy repeatedly asked the doctor why she had not considered the pain related to Alper's heart given that he had been experiencing it for some time.
He said: "Both myself and the family would like an explanation of why you sent him for a chest x-ray."
Dr Shajil said: "The symptoms were, to me, more suggestive of gastrointestinal problems. He described a burning pain in his chest and the only thing he could link it to was that it came on when he ate spring onions."
Alper's family, speaking through a friend who translated proceedings for them, asked Dr Shajil if she deemed him to be a hypochondriac. She replied: "Absolutely not."
The coroner is expected to publish his conclusion later today.
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