Entries on chart not meant to ‘mislead’

Retrospective entries made in the medical records of Savita Halappanavar were not made with the intention of misleading anyone and nothing had been deleted, senior counsel for Galway University Hospital has insisted.

The inquest into the death of Mrs Halappanavar on Oct 28 last heard that there were eight retrospective entries out of a total of 110 pages of medical notes.

Senior counsel for the hospital and the HSE, Declan Buckley, told coroner Dr Ciaran MacLoughlin that these comprised five “contemporaneous retrospective” notes. Because of an emergency, medical staff may have had to defer for an hour the writing up of a particular note, he explained.