I never had cancer, he pressured me to go private
IAN Paterson pressured Lesley Cuthbert into unnecessary private surgery after she was initially referred to him on the NHS, because of bleeding from one of her breasts. He told her there was a threeweek wait to be seen on the NHS but emphasised how she was in ‘urgent need’ of surgery and could be seen within days if she arranged treatment through her BUPA health insurance policy.
Mrs Cuthbert, now 69, a retired special needs tutor, underwent surgery at Spire Parkway Hospital in Solihull, West Midlands, to have her milk ducts removed in February 2006, and returned to the surgeon for regular follow-up appointments, X-rays and mammograms over the next three years, for which she had to pay hundreds of pounds more. But in 2014, the grandmother-of-three was shocked to be recalled to the hospital and told she had never had cancer. She said: ‘Paterson coerced me to go privately to earn a lot of money out of me. I lost my mother to breast cancer in 2001 so when he diagnosed me with the same illness, I went through a lot of distress and worry, as well as the operation itself.’ She added: ‘Spire have a duty of care to the people who walked through their doors. I’m really pleased that at last they want to provide compensation.’ At the time of Paterson’s sentencing, Mrs Cuthbert said he should have ‘got life, especially for those who he’d caused to lose their lives’.