Laid out on our kitchen table ,which measures 8ft by 3ft, are numerous dressings plus an arm brace and a hospital gown.

The dressings are called Sorbact, come five to pack, and each individual green dressing costs approx £1.20. I emptied every sealed cardboard box I counted 280 dressings. A cost, then, of approximately, £336.00. Plus there is the cost of all the other dressings, scissors and bags of various scissors plasters.

The dressings were left behind by district nurses, who tended my mother at home following treatment for a squamous cell carcinoma on her leg.

The treatment, without doubt, was top notch. These lovely ladies visited every three days and provided superb care.

I am well aware due to cross contamination (though how on earth sealed dressings in sealed sellotaped boxes could be contaminated I have no idea) that these dressings cannot be returned, but my question is: Why are these dressings issued apparently with such extravagant abandon, only to be left behind?

The cost of the arm brace, I am told, is around £140. Again it is single use.

It was given to my husband following a terrible triad injury and after removal of a plaster cast to treat this injury.

The brace appeared to be doing no good at all. My husband, in considerable discomfort, made a private appointment to see a surgeon specialising in elbows at Wrightington hospital. This elbow gent whipped off the brace, declared he liked neither casts nor braces, and gave my husband two very simple exercises to do, hourly for five days.

Within 48 hours the pain in his arm had disappeared and he was playing his guitar again.

My question is therefore, why go to the expense of administering a plaster cast and an expensive brace?

The hospital gown, I was told, is also non returnable.

The total value of NHS paraphernalia in my loft comes to probably well over £500. And we are just one household.

If the waste in the NHS was addressed, if those wasting valuable commodities were held to account, and if specialists could all sing from the same hymn sheet, then at least we would be some way to addressing the NHS's withering coffers.

Louise Broughton

Bowness