NEWLY released figures have revealed Preston Acute Hospitals and Chorley and South Ribble NHS Trust have death rates after surgery above national average levels.

The Performance Indicators for 2001/2002 show the Royal Preston and Chorley hospitals, have a death rate of 3,858 per 100,000 -- compared with a national average of 2,925.

But health bosses have defended the figures saying they do not take into consideration the proportion of seriously ill people they deal with.

Professor Peter Morgan-Capner, acting chief executive for the Preston and Chorley Trusts said: "We believe this grading does not reflect the range and severity of the cases we treat in comparison with other smaller, less specialist trusts.

"As a regional centre for a number of specialist and complex services, such as cancer, neurosciences and burns, many patients admitted by us or transferred to us from other hospitals, are acutely sick and in many cases terminally ill.

"Some of these patients have been admitted for minor procedures to make them more comfortable in their final days."

Professor Morgan-Capner said figures from operations such as stabilising a terminally ill patient, should not be included in the performance indicators.

He said: "The procedures themselves are unrelated to the cause of death, which was often the serious underlying medical condition, for example organ failure or cancer.

"It is important that determining factors like this are taken into account when interpreting the indictors."