A PENSIONER with a suspected blood clot on the brain has yet to receive vital surgery more than a year-and-a-half after he was hospitalised in a serious fall.

Geoffrey Driscoll had been suffering dizzy spells which led to a fall in Farrier Street, Worcester, in November 2007.

The vulnerable 70-year-old, who lives in sheltered accommodation in Warmstry Court, off Quay Street, Worcester city centre, was kept in Worcestershire Royal Hospital, Worcester, for three weeks after he lost his balance and fell backwards, knocking himself out on the pavement.

Mr Driscoll is angry because he was sent after his fall to appointments miles away in Coventry and Rugby for head scans.

He says it is too difficult for him to travel there and does not see why he cannot get treatment at Worcestershire Royal Hospital in Worcester.

The DVLA has not returned his driving licence after he notified them about his attacks of vertigo and he says it is difficult to get to the appointments using public transport.

He has had to depend on lifts to get to hospital but now fears he has already called in his favours and does not know when he will get treatment, either from Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust or University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust.

He said: “I understood that I would be transferred to Coventry and have an operation to remove fluid from my brain. I managed to get a lift to hospital in Coventry and I waited there for three-and-a-half hours and I still got no treatment.

“I have been waiting nearly two years for treatment for my vertigo and in that two years I have been sent all over the place for head scans and examinations but nothing has been done.

“I have now had four or five serious falls.The first time I nearly fractured my skull and the blow rendered me unconscious. I thought I would go to Coventry for an operation and that would be over and done with.

“It’s only a matter of time now before I have another fall. I’m a single man who is knocking on a bit. I just want a bit of consideration.”

Bhoresh Dhamija, Mr Driscoll’s consultant neurosurgeon at University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust, said in a letter to Mr Driscoll’s GP that he was advised to come to University Hospital Coventry in May last year for surgery but he declined to attend.

But in response, Mr Driscoll said without a car he was unable to get to the hospital and that he was sometimes afraid even to leave the house because of his dizzy spells.

The same consultant said Mr Driscoll came to the hospital in September last year but refused to wait to see a doctor and have a CT head scan.

But Mr Driscoll said he had no choice but to leave because he had been kept waiting for three-and-a-half hours and the friend who had given him a lift to the hospital could not wait any longer.

Mr Driscoll has had has had five scans – at Coventry and Rugby as well as the Royal – but no surgery for his condition, a bilateral chronic subdural haematoma.

Bhoresh Dhamija wrote in a letter to Mr Driscoll’s GP: “We would obviously be happy to see him if he would like a neurological review in the future.”

Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust declined to comment.