A PENSIONER died in Southampton General Hospital just hours after falling out of bed at a Dorset hotel, an inquest heard.
Philip Butler fell to the floor of the Fairhaven Hotel in Weymouth while on holiday from Kirby, Nottinghamshire.
A Southampton inquest heard that the impact damaged the 73-year-old’s neck and caused a laceration to his head.
But when he arrived in hospital he became agitated and began frantically moving around in his neck brace before suffering a fatal heart attack.
Pathologist James Nicholl told the inquest that the “violent way” the pensioner moved his neck further damaged his neck and spinal cord.
He said: “Because control of the heart and breathing passed through that part of the spinal cord in the neck it put extra pressure on the spinal cord and caused the heart attack.”
Southampton coroner Keith Wiseman said it was an “unfortunate sequence of events” and recorded an accidental death determination.
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