Loose Women presenter Andrea McLean has told of her near-death experience after she suffered a reaction to an anaesthetic in hospital.

The mother-of-two had been operated on the previous day for surgery on a painful umbilical hernia.

She told the Daily Mirror: “For a few seconds my husband thought I had slipped away. It was so frightening. My whole head had swollen up, my throat closed over, I couldn’t breathe and I felt so faint and sick.

“They were telling me to take deep breaths, but I was looking round the room, with all these people running in and out. I was in a panic, not knowing what the hell had happened. That moment of waking up was the scariest bit.”

Ms McLean, 41, said she had delayed the operation on her hernia, which had become so large she was often asked if she was pregnant, for fear that people would think she was “running off for a tummy tuck”.

When an ITV colleague came up to her in the canteen and said “Congratulations. When’s it due?” she decided it was finally time to get the hernia fixed.

Ms McLean, mother to Finlay, nine, and Amy, four, said her husband, builder Steve Toms, was with her in hospital when she started to feel faint and sick.

The presenter’s head swelled up, her skin went white and she struggled to breathe during the trauma just weeks ago.

Her husband ran into the hospital corridor screaming for help, and she was given oxygen, steroids and adrenalin to counteract the reaction she’d had to the anaesthetic.

After a few more days in hospital, Ms McLean went home but she suffered a panic attack in the shower after the trauma of what had happened.