Rat In Notts Hospital

40 operations had to be cancelled at Kings Mill in Mansfield.

Pest control experts had to be called out to a Nottinghamshire hospital after a rat went into an operating room. 

More than 40 operations at Kings Mill in Mansfield had to be cancelled - the hospital say it happened at night in a decomissioned theatre - and sent us a statement to tell us everything was sterilsed and there's nothing to worry about.

Mrs Karen Tomlinson, Director of Operations:

"We are proud of our services and the extremely high quality of care we offer to our patients, so we were extremely shocked to learn that there was evidence of a rodent having entered a decommissioned operating theatre during the night, at a time when the department was not in use. 

As soon as we became aware of this fact the following morning, we immediately took steps to thoroughly clean and sterilise the entire theatre area and called in external pest control experts to completely eradicate the problem. 

Whilst this work was underway, all surgical procedures were halted for one day and just over 40 patients had their operations rearranged. 

We have apologised to any patients affected for the inconvenience caused. I would like to reassure any concerned patient or relative that this was a minor, one-off incident that occurred over a week ago. 

We took immediate and comprehensive action to rectify matters and to restore services with the minimum of disruption. We are fully operational again. There is no cause for concern."