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A young dad who posed excitedly outside a hospital before his procedure went into cardiac arrest during the long-awaited double heart valve replacement surgery and died.

Mitchell Powell, 26, tweeted a picture of himself outside the entrance to the Bristol Heart Institute on February 3 last year, telling followers 'the day had arrived' and confidently exclaiming 'let's go'.

The young Swansea man had been born with a heart condition, which meant he had been through 20 heart operations over the years, had been reliant on a pacemaker and had been told he would need a full heart transplant in early adulthood, Wales Online reports.

Recalling the day of his operation, his sister, Kirsty Davies Powell said: "We were all so excited for him to go in because he was declining so rapidly leading up to his operation.

“So when the phone call came, we were all so chuffed and he was so excited to have his old life back, because he became so bad he couldn't look after his daughter.”

Whilst undergoing the procedure inside the hospital, Mitchell's heart was not strong enough and he went into cardiac arrest and sadly died.

Mrs Davies Powell said it came as a “massive shock”. The family still hadn’t accepted what had happened, she said.

Within an hour of leaving the hospital, Danielle received a phone call asking the family to come up because there had been a complication.

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"We all thought that we'd be told they were not able to do surgery through the planned keyhole method so they would have to open him up. Never in a million years did we think when we went in that we would be told he suffered a cardiac arrest."

"That was at 11.30am in the morning, and they fought and fought and fought all day for Mitchell, but it just wasn't enough, he wasn't strong enough."

An inquest was held into Mitchell's death in Bristol last month, in which it was concluded that he had died as a result of his health condition, with added complications leading up to his operation.

• Hospital

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