When Marjorie Greenhoff died suddenly after a short illness, her family were left with a number of unanswered questions as to what had happened.
Marjorie, 80, had been admitted to her local hospital after several weeks of a heart complaint and incidents where she was choking on her food and unable to eat. Within a week she had contracted a chest infection and had died. While the death certificate recorded an official cause of death as chest infection and cardiac arrest, Mrs Greenhoff’s family remained in the dark about what lay behind them.
Mrs Greenhoff said: “We wanted peace of mind. The death certificate might have said cardiac arrest and chest infection, but they were caused by whatever was making Marjorie choke and we had no idea what that was. We researched the issue online and found iGene. We contacted them and they were brilliant; we were invited in and spoke to their senior scientist, who explained the process and asked for her medical records.”
The scan showed Marjorie had suffered from Achalasia of cardia, an uncommon condition in which the sufferer’s esophagus loses the ability to move food. It also causes a blockage, which leads to food entering the lungs.
iGene were able to tell Mrs Greenhoff’s daughter Sue, that Marjorie had a physiological condition that accounted for the choking. Sue, from Barnsley, South Yorkshire, said: “I cannot thank iGene enough – we needed peace of mind and they provided it to us and that has really helped us to move on.”