A British woman was “disturbed and upset” to discover that her late mother’s body, which was repatriated to the UK after she passed away at Mater Dei Hospital, was returned to her with a missing organ – her heart.

“When you bury your loved ones, you believe that their organs are all in place,” Caroline Lally, 42, told The Sunday Times of Malta.

“I was really upset to discover that they kept her heart without informing me. In fact, I had to pay again to have it flown to the UK so that she could be buried in one piece.”

What she found particularly disturbing, Ms Lally claimed, was that principal medical laboratory scientist David Grima told her it was sometimes “normal practice” for organs to be retained for further investigation.

Her mother, Helen Foster, who had been living in Malta for the past 10 years, passed away aged 66 on February 19 while undergoing a routine angiogram. A magisterial inquiry was opened into the cause of her death and, a week later, her body was released.

A spokeswoman for the Health Ministry said the magisterial inquiry following Ms Foster’s death was still ongoing and the court-appointed experts had a duty to gather all the evidence so that their conclusion reflected the true facts.

More about the case in the Sunday Times of Malta and the e-paper on timesofmalta.com Premium.