‘When I was leaving the hospital, I thought I was next going to see Tom alive in Cork’

Access to a cath lab would not have saved a farmer whose death during a hospital transfer following a complication of a “silent heart attack” sparked outrage over cardiac services in the South-East, it has emerged.

Thomas Power, aged 39, of Woodstown, Co Waterford, died in an ambulance on the Waterford to Cork road on Sunday, June 18, from a massive tear in his heart wall — a late complication of a silent heart attack which could have occurred several days earlier, an inquest into his death established yesterday.