Heart experts today said it was
"unusual" for someone to wear electrode pads while walking following
revelations that government scientist David Kelly had four of the special
monitors on his chest when his body was found in an Oxfordshire wood.
Dr Kelly - the BBC's source for a report claiming the government
altered the contents of a dossier about Iraq - had probably been wearing a
24-hour electro-cardiogram recorder, also known as a Holter monitor,
medical experts said.
But it was odd that the pads that are connected to the device had not
been removed by doctors and were left attached to his chest, they said.
"If I was in a morgue and his body was presented to me I would have
thought it had come out of a coronary care unit or an operating theatre,"
said Professor Konrad Jamrozik, of Imperial College Hospital London.
"It would be unusual for someone to be walking around wearing these
pads," he told the press association.
Another heart specialist, who declined to be named, also said it was
"very unusual" for someone to be found wearing the pads.
"It would suggest that at some time he had been connected to a heart
monitor in a hospital or, and this is more likely, he had been connected
to a 24-hour ECG recorder.
"This is a small device which would record any events in the rhythm and
would be returned to a hospital to be analysed."
New details about Dr Kelly's physical condition emerged today when Lord
Hutton opened his inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the
scientist's death.
Lord Hutton read from an account of the postmortem examination
conducted by the pathologist, Nicholas Hunt, the day after Dr Kelly died.
Dr Hunt's report revealed that Dr Kelly had been suffering from
coronary artery disease, which would have hastened rather than caused his
death.
The pathologist believed the main cause of Dr Kelly's death was
bleeding from an incision on his left wrist, Lord Hutton said.
Dr Kelly had also taken off his watch and glasses before his death in
an Oxfordshire wood two weeks ago, it was revealed.
"The removal of the watch in this way and the removal of spectacles are
features pointing to this being an act of self-harm," the pathologist
wrote.
· To contact the MediaGuardian newsdesk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or
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