UPDATE: |Warwick Davis’ wife Samantha died hours before planned hospital discharge, inquest hears News

Warwick Davis’ wife Samantha died last year

Actress Samantha Davis died hours before she was expected to be discharged from hospital following complications of essential surgery, an inquest heard today.

An inquest into Ms Davis’ death concluded that the actress, and wife of Warwick Davis, suffered a fatal cardiac arrest after receiving surgery in March last year.

Ms Davis died aged 53 at University College Hospital in London on March 24. She had first been admitted to hospital on February 7 following a sudden loss of mobility in her lower limbs after a disc prolapse.

On February 20, Ms Davis underwent a thoracotomy operation to open the chest wall and had a second thoracotomy on March 14, the hearing heard.

After both procedures Ms Davis’ condition was believed to be improving and University College Hospital at Westmoreland Street planned to discharge her, the inquest heard.

However, Ms Davis suffered a cardiac arrest on March 23 at 11.25pm and was pronounced dead on March 24 at 0.28am after a failed attempt to resuscitate her.

Senior Coroner for Inner West London, Professor Fiona Wilcox, concluded from the evidence given at Inner West London Coroner’s Court that Ms Davis’s medical cause of death should be “arrhythmic cardiac arrest and complications following left thoracotomies”.

Prof Wilcox said: “In my view, the stress of everything together has precipitated this arrhythmic cardiac arrest in a lady who was not known to have any previous arrhythmia problems.”

On the care which Ms Davis received, the coroner added: “I have found nothing but excellent care being delivered to this lady and all of her complications were appropriately managed.

“It is frankly heart breaking that the surgery itself was successful only for complications to arise and to cause her death.”

David Lawrence, a cardiothoracic surgeon at University College London Hospitals (UCLH), said Ms Davis’ condition was “progressing well” after having surgical drain removals on March 19 and March 23.

Mr Lawrence said: “Very sadly, on the night this happened the original plan had been that she would be discharged home the following day.

“We had good evidence that this patient had a chest x-ray that was acceptable, very stable observations and this patient did not bleed during the day.”

Mr Lawrence added that he did not believe the hospital “would have done anything differently”, and described Ms Davis as a “delightful lady”.

Following a post-mortem examination on April 5 2024, pathologist Dr John Firth said Ms Davis’s death resulted from complications of a left hemothorax, a blood collection in her lungs, following thoracotomy surgery.