A doctor has expressed his regret at failing to spot that a runner diagnosed with a pulled hamstring had actually suffered a broken leg, telling her inquest he wished he could go back in time and order an x-ray.
Sarah-Jayne Roche, 39, pulled up while running the Cardiff half-marathon but went to hospital three times before it was realised that her femur was fractured.
The mother of two died of a blood clot on her lungs as she was operated on 12 days after the event.
Dr Tim Manfield, of Royal Glamorgan hospital, near Cardiff, saw Roche at a soft tissue appointment on 12 October last year – five days after the race. But he did not send her for an x-ray, a decision he said he had “beaten himself up” over.
Giving evidence at the inquest in Pontypridd, south Wales, Manfield said: “I believed it to be a muscular injury rather than a fracture.
“It was something I hadn’t come across in my career before. It’s such a large bone that to have a stress fracture occur from running is very unusual, I certainly had never heard of it before. I wish I could jump in a time machine and go back and order an x-ray.”
Roche’s mother, Patricia Newman, claimed the doctor did not physically examine her daughter’s leg despite being told it was “freezing cold”.
Manfield said: “That is untrue, I remember feeling the knee, thigh and hamstring and pulling on the lower leg.
“Mrs Roche remained in her wheelchair throughout. There were signs of tenderness at the fracture site but I still believed it to be a muscular injury.”
The doctor said if he had been told the leg was cold he would have carried out further examinations.
Manfield also told the inquest he ordered an ultrasound but the paperwork was never found.
The inquest heard that Roche, from Beddau near Pontypridd, was running the half marathon to raise money for a Parkinson’s charity after her father, Alan, was diagnosed with the disease.
At the seven-mile point in the race with her husband Steven, 42, she felt “a shooting pain up her leg” and came to a halt.
She visited hospital on three occasions where she was given painkillers and told to apply ice – but was never sent for an x-ray.
The consultant orthopaedic surgeon Dr Daniel Lewis said it was “the most traumatic day of his professional career” when Roche died during surgery.
Her medical cause of death was pulmonary embolism with deep vein thrombosis and a fractured femur. The inquest heard immobility was a significant factor in the development of “fairly large” blood clots.
The inquest continues.
