A £200,000 negligence claim has been launched against Dorset County Hospital after a young boy suffered a brain tumour that has left him virtually blind.

The High Court claim, which has been launched on behalf of a teenager from Weymouth, accuses the Trust of negligence claiming that failure in 2017 at DCH to carry out a CT scan on the boy who had been admitted as an emergency resulted in a five week delay in him being diagnosed as suffering from a brain tumour.

The claim is made in a writ issued at the court in London and just made publicly available and it blames the delay for the fact the boy is now virtually blind.

Doctors at the Dorchester hospital are said to have thought at the time they first saw the 16-year-old, who was then 12, that he was suffering from migraine.

Five weeks later though the boy saw an optician who told his mother that he should be taken back to the hospital emergency department. They then arranged an urgent CT scan which led to the brain tumour being discovered.

The writ says that the boy now has minimal vision and some cognitive impairments. It says the Trust has admitted that a CT scan which would have shown the tumour should have been performed earlier.

However, the Trust is said to claim that he would have suffered some sight loss in any event, and is seeking proof over the amount of sight loss said to have been suffered as a result of the delay in diagnosis.

The boy's lawyers say that if the CT scan had been carried out urgently after April 1 2017, when he first went to the hospital, it would have shown a large tumour, with water on the brain, and he would have undergone surgery by April 2, rather than five weeks later on May 7.

Earlier treatment, say the court papers, would have given him a much better outcome for his vision, with normal visual acuity, and some visual field loss, which could have improved.

Now though, the papers say, he has severely reduced visual acuity, with profound visual field loss, which will not improve. There is said to be no treatment which would help.

The boy is said to have first noticed problems with his vision in December 2016, rubbing his eyes, rolling them and looking up, telling his mother he was trying to stretch them.

He then suffered from headaches and vomiting in January 2017, his neck and shoulders felt stiffer, and by March he needed to sit closer and closer to the front of the class at school as his vision continued to deteriorate.

His initial hospital visit was on March 31, 2017 after two friends took him to the sick room at school, and he was taken to hospital by ambulance, confused, vomiting, and with a slow heartrate.

After the brain tumour diagnosis in May 2017 he was transferred to Southampton University Hospital, where the next day he underwent brain surgery for a rare type of benign brain tumour.

DCH have been contacted for a comment.