An inquest on a patient who was wrongly injected with an anaesthetic was expected to open today.

The inquiry into the death will be conducted by Brighton coroner Veronica Hamilton-Deeley and will identify the patient who died in the Royal Sussex County Hospital on Saturday morning.

The patient had been in the intensive care unit for three days after an experienced senior consultant injected the drug Bupivicaine into a vein during surgery.

The anaesthetic, which is regularly used as pain control during labour, should have been injected into the spine.

The consultant, who is yet to be named by Brighton Healthcare NHS Trust, has been suspended while a hospital investigation is carried out.

The Royal College of Anaesthetists has also been drafted in to carry out an independent review.

The patient underwent major surgery last week for an abdominal aortic aneurysm, a weakness in one of the body's largest blood vessels.

Stuart Welling, chief executive of Brighton Health Care Trust, said: "I apologise unreservedly to the family for this error and offer them my deepest sympathy.

"A full inquiry has been initiated and I have asked the Royal College of Anaesthetists to undertake an independent review."

A patients' watchdog group has expressed extreme concern about the incident.

Mo Marsh, chairman of the Brighton, Hove and Lewes Community Health Council, said: "We are extremely disturbed the clinical procedures in place can allow this kind of mistake to occur even when there's a senior consultant involved."

Councillor Marsh, who is also a member of Brighton and Hove Council, said: "We are extremely concerned at the lack of effective processes to prevent this and we would like an immediate and robust investigation."

A spokesman for the Brighton Health Care NHS Trust said the consultant had been suspended while an internal investigation was under way. This would involve written statements from all staff involved in the patient's care.

It is coordinated by the Directorate of Professional Practice, which will report to the trust's board.

Disciplinary action can be recommended by the board which, depending on the circumstances, could lead to staff being given more training on policies and procedures.

In exceptional cases, if a member of staff was suspected of criminal activity, the police would be alerted.

Professor Graham Smith, senior vice president of the Royal College of Anaesthetists, said spinal pain relief, or epidurals, were routinely given after operations such as the one on the Brighton patient and complications were rare.

He said: "An abdominal aortic aneurysm involves major surgery with a very large incision from the breast bone right down to the pelvis.

"It is extremely painful afterwards and it is very common to give patients epidurals so pain relief can be administered over the following two to three days."

The technique involves inserting a needle into the spine and passing a tiny catheter into the epidural space in the back, through which relatively large amounts of local anaesthetic can be administered to numb the area and reduce pain.

But the epidural area is surrounded by veins and if the catheter is mistakenly inserted into a vein and anaesthetic administered, the amounts involved can stop the heart.