A patient was stunned when he was told minutes before he was due to have major heart surgery that his operation had been cancelled.

Publican John Archbold, 63, was waiting to be taken into theatre for an operation on a serious swelling of the main artery leading from his heart when he was told he would have to go home because there was no intensive care bed available at the University Hospital of North Durham.

The North Durham Health Care NHS Trust said Mr Archbold's operation had been cancelled for good medical reasons.

Mr Archbold, who along with his wife Lena owns a pub in Consett, County Durham, was admitted to hospital last Tuesday and was told his operation would go ahead as planned the following morning.

He said: "I want to make it clear I have no complaints at all about the way hospital staff looked after me during my short stay. I would like to praise them because they are doing their best and need support at this time.

"I had built up confidence about going in for the operation and I didn't feel disturbed about it, but I have been left a total wreck and a bundle of nerves since I was told it was cancelled at such short notice.

"I can only describe the way it happened as a form of mental cruelty and I don't know how I will build myself up again for the operation."

A spokeswoman for the trust said Mr Archbold's operation had been cancelled because when doctors made their ward rounds on the Wednesday morning they decided the eight patients already in the intensive care unit were too ill to move.

"The new hospital has been getting a lot of criticism but there is no way that this case can be put down to PFI (Private Finance Initiative). Doctors had to make the decision based on the fact that we had eight very sick people in the ICU."