Top surgeon ‘performed unnecessary breast ops’ Doctor on trial charged with ‘wounding with intent’
AMIDLAND breast surgeon advised one of his patients to have a double mastectomy or risk “full-blown cancer”, despite tests showing no sign of malignancy, a court has heard.
Ian Paterson then wrote to Frances Perks’ insurers with a false diagnosis in order to justify an operation carried out for “no good reason whatsoever”, prosecutors claim.
Paterson, 59, who worked at the NHS-run Solihull Hospital and the private Little Aston Spire and Solihull Spire Hospitals, is standing trial at Nottingham Crown Court accused of 20 counts of wounding with intent against nine women and one man between 1997 and 2011.
Prosecutors claim Paterson lied to his alleged victims, “exaggerating or quite simply inventing risk of cancer” then often claimed payments for more expensive procedures. Jurors have previously heard claims that he carried out completely unnecessary operations for “obscure motives” that may have included a desire to “earn extra money”.
Prosecutor Julian Christopher QC told the court that patient Frances Perks was referred to Paterson in 1994 at the age of 35. She had found a lump in her breast and was concerned because both her mother and sister had died from cancer.
“Because of the family history, she was kept under close surveillance and, on a number of occasions over the next 10 years, Mr Paterson removed lumps from one or the other of her breasts, which in each case were found to be benign,” said Mr Christopher.
More than a decade later, Mrs Perks went to see Paterson again after the discovery of another lump, the prosecution said. Examination of tissue around the lump was not showing any sign of malignancy, Mr Christopher told the jury.
“She was told it was time to be thinking of having a mastectomy and that, if she did not, she would end up with full-blown cancer,” he added.
“He said that, if it were him, he would have a double mastectomy.
“He wrote to her insurers, stating that she had recently been diagnosed with multi focal LCIS in her left breast and that she had a very high statistical probability of having disease in the other breast. “This is quite wrong.” LCIS stands for Lobular carcinoma situ – abnormal cell growth that increases a person’s risk of developing invasive breast cancer later on in life.
Paterson then carried out the mastectomy on her left breast in November 2008, a procedure that the prosecution claim was “another unjustified and unnecessary operation”.
Jurors were told: “Mrs Perks describes getting over the operation as awful. It was extremely painful and she had ongoing problems.
“She thought that all of this was necessary because otherwise her life was at risk. That was what she believed as a result of what she had been told by Mr Paterson. In fact, it was quite unnecessary.”
The trial is expecetd to last up to ten weeks. in