Jailed surgeon gave patient a stranger’s gallstones Campaigner says Paterson did not confine needless operations to mastectomies
DEBORAH Douglas holds up a jar containing the gallstones removed from her body by shamed Solihull surgeon Ian Paterson.
She recalls how, as she came to after surgery, Paterson told her: “You’re cured. You can go and eat a fry-up now.”
But there are serious, shocking questions. Because the gallstones are not Mrs Douglas’s. She has never had gallstones.
The surgery, carried out by the rogue medic serving 20 years behind bars for intentionally wounding patients, was unnecessary.
Fifty-nine year-old Paterson, who subjected women to incomplete, and often needless, mastectomies, went ahead regardless.
For Mrs Douglas, a breast cancer survivor, it was a double blow.
She had already undergone seven months of unnecessary chemotherapy at his hands.
Paterson, who worked at the privately-run Spire Parkway and Spire Little Aston hospitals, and at the NHS’s Solihull Hospital, convinced Mrs Douglas she needed an operation to remove her gall bladder.
She says he presented her with the stones as she woke up from surgery at the Spire Hospital.
“I told him about a twinge in my side,” remembers the Hall Green mum.
“After an ultrasound examination in October 2009, he told me that I had gallstones.
“After the operation he told me, ‘We did the right thing, your gall bladder was diseased’.
“He told me, ‘You’re cured, you can go and have a fry-up tomorrow.
“But at the end of last year I had a recall appointment at Spire, which I’d had to push for.
“The doctor told me, ‘ Mrs Douglas, you’ve never had gallstones’.
“I asked him, ‘Well, whose gallstones have I got at home then?’
“He didn’t know. We don’t know, but one thing’s for sure – they’re not mine.
“My husband went white as a sheet and couldn’t believe it, but I can’t say I was surprised.
“This is what Paterson did. He convinced people there was something ‘sinister’, something that could be cancer or fatal, and would do operations.
“The mastectomies are just the tip of the iceberg. I want to know what else he was getting away with.”
Mrs Douglas says Paterson had earlier performed six needless PET scans on her, a procedure where a patient is injected with a radioactive material to help detect cancerous cells.
One of the leading forces who petitioned the Department of Health to commission an inquiry, she believes that potentially hundreds of unnecessary operations, scans and procedures were carried out but have yet to be uncovered.
Last month, the 59-year-old mum gave evidence to the independent Paterson Inquiry in Birmingham, chaired by Bishop Graham James.
This summer the inquiry interviewed more than 100 patients and families of those now deceased. The panel will now invite the surgeon’s former colleagues at the Heart of England NHS Trust and privately-run Spire to give evidence, as well as other parties including regulators.
“It was emotional, and there was a lot of hurt,” says Mrs Douglas. “I’ve talked through my story many times before, but this time was very emotional, and I got upset.
“You’re in a non-judgmental environment, and I do believe that the Bishop wants to get to the truth about what happened.
“My fear is that recommendations will be made, the NHS and Spire will say that lessons have b e e n learned, a n d noth- ing changes. Not only do I want Spire to be held accountable, but I also want them to have a robust recall.
“Paterson carried out these operations and procedures in spades for himself and for Spire. They have a duty of care, but they have washed their hands of us.”
Latest figures from the NHS reveal that of the 1,207 patients that Paterson performed a mastectomy on, 709 are now dead.
Many of them saw their cancer return after breast tissue was left for ‘cosmetic reasons’, a practice unrecognised by the Royal College of Surgeons.
Mrs Douglas and other patients believe Paterson should be tried again on manslaughter charges.
“You might think it’s bad luck if you get your cancer to come back,” she says. “But it’s not bad luck when your surgeon deliberately left tissue there.
“I would like to see him tried again for the women who have died since having these so-called ‘cleavage-sparing mastectomies’.”
A review of the surviving 531 NHS mastectomy patients published in November 2017 found that 50 per cent of surgery to remove the breast was incomplete.
And a further 27 per cent may have not been complete.
The NHS has now set out an action plan to monitor Paterson’s former mastectomy patients, which includes annual MRI scans for 15 years after diagnosis for reconstruction patients who did not have radiotherapy following surgery. After being contacted by the Birmingham Post, Spire said its review and recall had been robust, and that all patients’ notes had been reviewed by an independent panel. But the hospital refused to divulge how many patients had been identified, and
then recalled.