The family of an elderly patient who died after being dropped on his head by ambulance staff have settled for a five-figure financial payout.

Kenneth Thomas, 81, was being carried down the stairs of his Esher home on June 25, 2009, when a crew dropped him.

Mr Thomas had been receiving treatment for prostate cancer and had been vomiting and feeling unwell when his wife phoned their GP, who called an ambulance.

But the ambulance crew kept quiet about the accident and did not record it on his notes when they took him to Kingston Hospital.

His head injury went unnoticed for five days until a brain scan showed a haemorrhage.

He died on July 5.

In a statement, his family said: “We had never envisaged that we would lose Ken at this time and it was very distressing for us to see him in pain and deteriorating. “To find out about the bleed at that stage when he had deteriorated too far to operate was very hard.

“We hope that this draws attention to the need to take any blow to the head seriously.”

Philippa Luscombe, a partner at Pennington Solicitors, said: “This was a very sad case where Mr Thomas died unexpectedly in circumstances that were particularly traumatic for his family.

“The incident was unfortunate but it was worrying that the ambulance crew involved did not appreciate the potential significance of the incident and the importance of documenting and reporting it.”

Woking coroner, Dr Karin Englehart who delivered a narrative verdict at an inquest on October 28, last year, said Mr Thomas was “a sick man, but not a very sick man” and said the fall “may or may not have hastened his death”.

A cancer surgeon gave evidence at the inquest that Mr Thomas, an otherwise fit man, would have survived chemotherapy and would have lived for months or even a year after his treatment.

A South East Coast Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust (SECAmb) spokesperson said: “The trust would like to offer its sincere condolences to Mr Thomas’s family.

“The trust is extremely sorry for the standard of care provided to Mr Thomas which fell below the level the trust would expect.”

Kingston Hospital said: “We would like to pass our condolences to Mr Thomas’s family.

“Staff working in the hospital’s accident and emergency department treated Mr Thomas based on the information provided by the ambulance crew that brought him in and the symptoms he was presenting with.

“If the hospital had been made aware of the trauma Mr Thomas had received to the head, a CT scan would have been carried out sooner.”