A DUDLEY woman is set to receive a six-figure pay out after a medication error caused irreversible damage to her inner ear – leaving her unable to balance without support when standing.

The 57-year-old said the impact on her health – caused by her needlessly being prescribed the antibiotic Gentamicin for seven weeks after being discharged from Russells Hall Hospital - has been devastating.

She now has "little life at all", is confined to sleeping downstairs at home and suffers from anxiety.

The woman had successfully come through an operation to drain three abscesses on her brain at Birmingham's Queen Elizabeth Hospital and was transferred to the Dudley hospital to recover, where she was given daily antibiotics for six weeks.

Keen to allow her to return home as she wished, doctors then changed the patient's medication when discharging her, meaning she only had to visit a local clinic once a day.

However, the decision to put her on an intravenous course of the antibiotic gentamicin - which is used to treat severe infections and is known to cause inner ear problems as a side effect - was not checked with specialists in the neurosurgical department at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital.

Independent medical experts, consulted as part of a legal case against The Dudley Group NHS Foundation Trust, said the drug should not have prescribed at all, and that once prescribed the drug should only have been used for a short period.

At the very most, they said Gentamicin should have been taken for a maximum of seven days, yet she remained on the medication for 52 days after being released from hospital in November 2013.

The woman began to feel unwell at home in late December, suffering from unsteadiness on her feet, nausea and feeling disorientated.

Two weeks later, she was admitted to the hospital, where it was assumed she’d had a reaction to epilepsy medication.

Suffering from increased confusion and dizziness and having difficulty walking, she was finally taken off the drug on January 6, 2014, but still remained on two more intravenous antibiotics for a further month.

When she saw an ear nose and throat specialist four months later, she was told she had suffered gentamicin toxicity, which had caused the damage to her inner ear.

“I couldn’t believe it really and I think it is shocking," the patient said.

Russells Hall Hospital has taken away my quality of life. I can’t do many of the things I used to enjoy."

The woman said she remains angry over her treatment and is urging other patients to question the medication they are given, and to ask about potential side effects and long-term health risks associated with antibiotics.

"I feel I was very badly let down. After I had the operation to remove the abscesses I was feeling fine and pretty much back to normal in a couple of days," she said.

“I have very little life at all now. When I stand up and try to walk I disorientated straight away and I now have to use two sticks to balance.

"I hope that the hospital has learned lessons from this. As a patient it is easy to assume that doctors won’t make mistakes but they do, and it has come at a big cost to me."

Diane Wake, chief executive of The Dudley Group NHS Foundation Trust, said: "Our antibiotics guidelines are continually revised and our medicines management policies are updated to reflect these changes.

"We are deeply sorry that the antibiotic regime resulted in such severe side effects and we apologise for the long-term impact and distress this has caused."

Solicitor Caroline Murgatroyd, of medical negligence specialists Hudgell Solicitors, who led the case, said: “We are pleased that the trust made full admissions in this case and agreed a substantial six-figure damages settlement to reflect the suffering and loss caused."