‘It could have saved her life’: the NHS heart patient who died before getting vital procedure

Sue Griffin’s severe aortic stenosis progressed quickly, resulting in her death while on waiting list

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Sue Griffin was an active 68-year-old, retraining to become a nurse and indulging her love of horse riding, when she began to experience breathing difficulties, such as breathlessness. “She was then diagnosed with asthma, and was going to see an asthma nurse,” her daughter Kirstie Campbell recalls.

But despite treatment, it soon became apparent that Griffin’s symptoms were not improving. “She was getting more and more breathless as time was progressing,” Campbell says. “She struggled doing things with the horses as well, she’d always done everything herself. She was getting fairly frustrated with herself, thinking that she was just turning into an old lady really quickly.”