A son has spoken of his anger following the death of his mother who spent 15 months on an NHS heart bypass surgery waiting list, despite the desperate intervention of her family and MP.

Grandmother Pauline Jefferys, 68, who suffered from leukaemia and diabetes, was told in November 2000 she needed a triple bypass, but by January this year she was no longer fit for surgery.

Her family said after learning she was not to have the operation she lost the will to live and died on February 21.

Her son Steve Jefferys said the final blow came when a letter arrived at his mother's empty Kendal home, dated five days after she died, in which Blackpool Victoria Hospital chiefs said they would try to schedule her surgery "as soon as possible".

MP Tim Collins is to take up Mrs Jefferys's case with health ministers.

Mr Jefferys and his wife, Sally, of Maple Drive, Kendal, decided to speak about Pauline Jefferys's ordeal to draw attention to other patients' plight.

Last year Pauline Jefferys contacted MP for Westmorland and Lonsdale Tim Collins and the HEARTLINE campaign, run jointly with The Westmorland Gazette.

She told the Gazette she had been "dumbfounded" to be told she faced an 18-month wait for the bypass and a new valve, following two heart attacks.

Anxious not to queue jump, she nevertheless thought her other illnesses might make her case more urgent.

Mrs Jefferys's family and Mr Collins tried to intervene on her behalf, but without success.

She died in Kendal's Westmorland General Hospital of cardiac failure, heart disease and a secondary cause of leukaemia.

Mr Jefferys, 36, who works in South Lakeland District Council's highways department, said: "I'm angry that they've just not classed her as an urgent case, and they sent that letter out five days after she died.

It's just a simple mistake but it just shows to me they are so inefficient."

He said his mother, who lived at Birkbeck Close, was initially well enough to survive surgery: "From that day she was told she was never going to have the operation she started to give up."

Figures for January show there were 26 patients in Morecambe Bay who have been waiting more than nine months for bypass surgery, 12 of whom have been waiting longer than 12 months.

A government target is that, by the end of this month, no one should wait more than 12 months for NHS heart surgery.

Mrs Jefferys was placed on the urgent waiting list last September.

In a letter to Tim Collins, Blackpool Victoria consultant cardiothoracic surgeon John Au said: "It is no secret that clinical priorities have been distorted by the Government's fixation on bringing down waiting lists."

He said he was approaching the " ludicrous situation" when his urgent and routine lists had equal waits, and it made a "complete mockery of clinical prioritisation".

Mr Au declined to comment this week, but head of NHS communications in the North West Hugh Lamont said no doctor was put under pressure to distort clinical priorities.

Blackpool Victoria Hospital bosses said their longest wait for heart surgery was 15 months, but the average was four-and-a-half months for urgent cases and six months for routine.

From April, Morecambe Bay patients will have the option of having their surgery at private hospitals in Glasgow and London, and an NHS London hospital, paid for by the Blackpool hospital, in a bid to cut waiting lists.

A new £30 million cardiac unit is to be built at the hospital.

A spokesman said they apologised if the letter sent after Mrs Jefferys's death "caused any distress", and that only clinical need, not the leukaemia, affected her treatment.

The Government this week announced that NHS hospitals across the country are to be invited to bid to undertake thousands of extra heart operations through a new £100 million fund.

Tim Collins said he was "deeply saddened" at Mrs Jefferys's death.

He would ask ministers about the letter that arrived after she died, and Mr Au's comments on clinical priorities.

"Despite recent announcements of extra money for heart treatments people are still dying, waiting sometimes more than a year for treatment."