A woman who was seen to visibly improve on the operating table moments after a near-fatal blood clot was removed from her lungs is praising Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust for giving her ‘another shot at life’. 

Helen Foster, 58, of Hackenthorpe, is one of the first patients in South Yorkshire to benefit from a treatment to remove blood clots from the blood vessels in her lungs. The treatment, known as mechanical thrombectomy, uses a novel medical device to physically suck blood clots out from the lung.  

Without the treatment, the mum-of-three was at risk of ‘deteriorating rapidly’, according to her doctors.

Foster started to struggle with breathlessness and mobility problems a few weeks prior to her life-saving procedure but put it down to bad seizures.