The husband and daughter of Rosaleen Duffy (62) have raised serious issues over how Duffy . . . who was being fed through a tube in her stomach . . . became seriously ill after a minor accident last month and died six days later in intensive care. They fear her feeding tube broke unbeknownst to staff and that she actually died from thirst.

It had been a seemingly benign incident that led to her death. On the afternoon of Saturday 21 April, Duffy sat down too hard on a chair upstairs in her home in Collon, Co Louth, slipped, and felt a "shocking sore" sharp pain in her pelvis. She went for a lie-down, hoping sleep would alleviate the pain, but the next day, awaking in some discomfort, she travelled by ambulance to Drogheda with her brother. Her husband, John, followed in his car.

Six days later, Duffy lay dead in Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital. The county coroner must now decide whether to hold an inquest into the death following the hospital's post-mortem.

John Duffy, Rosaleen's husband, said his wife had made good progress on the Monday and Tuesday nights in the hospital but "on Wednesday night, she was a different woman completely. She was confused. I said 'she's not right', and the nurse said it was the painkillers. I thought she should've been on a drip."

Having survived throat cancer, Duffy's voice-box had been removed and her throat closed over. She ingested food and liquid through a tube in her stomach. Her family noticed signs of dehydration during her stay in hospital. "I did think that something would be wrong . . . I'm not a nurse or a doctor, but her lips were very cracked and dry, " said John. "They said there was something wrong on the Friday that they couldn't get food into her, that the peg [in her stomach] was broken. They were waiting for someone to come and fix itf she was very confused, she couldn't see very well and she didn't really know me. I sat on her bed and washed her mouth out with cold water, then she asked my daughter who she was."

When their daughter Caroline visited on the Friday afternoon, she couldn't believe the change in her mother since the Tuesday, which was when she had last seen her.

Caroline said her mother was lying in her own urine and faeces, and had been ringing a bell for assistance for half-an-hour.

When a nurse arrived, she told Rosaleen to get out of her bed so she could change the sheets, but she couldn't even stand.

"When she did get sicker and sicker, she was moved to intensive care, " Caroline told the Sunday Tribune. "They said [she died from] organ failure . . . what we do want to know is why her organs failed so quickly."

A spokeswoman for the Health Service Executive (HSE) told the Sunday Tribune that, "in the case of an unexpected death, the cause of death will be determined by post-mortem, the results of which will be sent to the coroner". The HSE said that its hospital group manager received a call on the evening of Friday 4 May from the family of Rosaleen Duffy, "outlining their concerns regarding her care while she was a patient in the hospital. The hospital group manager agreed at that point to look at the issues raised in accordance with the hospital complaints procedures.

The family will be kept informed of the process by the hospital, including the necessary timeframe to completion."