DOCTORS have defended their decision to prevent a Hampshire cancer victim from going home to die after criticism from his widow.

Jane Cantor said her husband Derek, 77, suffered needlessly for 11 hours in Lymington Hospital as he battled lung cancer and a chest infection.

A senior doctor told his Winchester inquest that he was not fit to leave hospital and said the case was “difficult to manage”.

Mr Cantor, a former Navy electrician, of Hill Top, near Beaulieu, was “absolutely terrified” of death and was anxious about his breathlessness, the hearing was told.

Describing a perceived lack of attention from doctors during the hospital stay in November, a tearful Ms Cantor said: “He had 11 hours just fighting for every breath and it shouldn’t have been like that.

“He was absolutely terrified. He wouldn’t look at me, he wouldn’t talk to me because he wanted to go home.

“Why let him suffer like that for 11 hours struggling to breathe?” she added, suggesting Mr Cantor could have been sedated.

Lymington Hospital consultant Dr Rachel Anderson said Mr Cantor was medicated to “take the edge off” and could have been discharged had his condition stabilised before his death on November 10.

“It was really difficult because he was breathless and afraid,” she said. “There’s no doubt that we found the last bit quite difficult to manage as well as we would have liked.”

Doctors spoke to Oakhaven Hospice in Lymington to see whether they could have improved their care, the inquest heard.

“They felt when people have very severe anxiety about death, it’s very difficult,” Dr Anderson said. “They said that they felt realistically we probably had done the best we could.”

The inquest ruled that Mr Cantor contracted cancer from asbestos exposure whilst working on ships in the 1960s.

Mr Cantor developed the chest infection, panic attacks and anxiety partly as a result, Dr Anderson said.

Senior central Hampshire coroner Grahame Short said: “It is incredibly upsetting, and I can’t start to understand how difficult it was to witness somebody dying in the way that his family did in this case, to be with them in those last few hours and days of their life.

“It is equally difficult, I think, for the medical professionals trying to deal with it. It does seem to me that Mr Cantor did have particular problems, specifically of anxiety and with wanting to go home when he was not in a fit state to do so, that complicated those final hours.”

Dr Anderson apologised to Ms Cantor after the inquest.