AN OPEN verdict has been recorded at the inquest of a Hampshire pensioner who died in hospital.

Jack Peck, 76, died at Southampton General Hospital on December 7 after food given to him through a tube pooled in his stomach and went into his lungs.

Mr Peck, from Kingfisher Close, Hamble, had been a patient in the hospital for almost a year.

Southampton Coroner's Court was told that the pensioner was, on occasions, deprived of food, water and medication for as long as 24 hours after the tube used to feed him became blocked.

But Prof William Roche, who carried out the post-mortem, told the court that food had pooled in Mr Peck's stomach before being regurgitated into his lungs, causing him to choke to death.

Dr Stroud, a gastroenterologist at the hospital, said the pooling of food was likely to have been caused by a failure in the gut and that the stomach would have regurgitated the food if it could not pass through the digestive system.

He added: "The gut failing in someone who's frail and fragile is not uncommon. It would not be detected until the food was adequate to cause the aspiration."

The court had been told that an alarm on Mr Peck's ventilator should have sounded if he had difficulty breathing, but Dr Stroud said this may not have happened as the pressure change necessary to trigger the alarm may not have occurred during the regurgitation.

Southampton coroner Keith Wiseman said: "If he had not died in the middle of a feed, but if part of the lower body failed to function then he would have soon taken in bodily fluids from the stomach and would have died in that way."