Coroner's Finding: Hughes, Ellis Newton

83y · Male·aspiration pneumonia

Ellis Newton Hughes, 83-year-old retired mining engineer with metastatic prostate cancer, sustained a femoral fracture in a fall on 5 February 2020. He underwent open reduction and internal fixation on 10 February 2020 at Royal Hobart Hospital. Post-operatively he developed aspiration pneumonia, presenting with vomiting on 12 February and acute deterioration with hypoxia on 13 February, dying the same day. The coroner found medical care at RHH was of good standard. While the initial ambulance response took 2 hours 8 minutes (beyond the 60-minute target for priority 3 cases), the coroner explicitly found this delay was not related to his death. The death resulted from natural causes precipitated by the fall, surgery, and underlying advanced cancer causing frailty and cachexia.