Surgeon ‘made up cancer risks to operate on healthy patients’
AN EXPERIENCED surgeon has gone on trial accused of deliberately carrying out “completely unnecessary” operations on breast cancer patients.
Ian Paterson repeatedly lied to private patients about their conditions and performed dozens of botched mastectomies which caused them “serious harm”, a court has heard.
Prosecutors say Mr Paterson “invented” serious risks of cancer and performed life-changing procedures for “no medically justified reason” over a 14-year period. Some of his patients developed severe mental health problems as a result of their ordeal.
A jury at Nottingham Crown Court heard that Mr Paterson may have been acting for “financial gain” by pocketing sums for further check-ups and followup surgery. He is said to have submitted false payment claims for surgery he knew he had not carried out.
It was also suggested he may have “enjoyed” holding patients’ “lives in his hands” after falsely making them believe they were gravely ill.
The 59-year-old is accused of maliciously wounding nine female patients and one man while working at two private Spire Healthcare hospitals in the West Midlands, between 1997 and 2011.
Mr Paterson, of Altrincham, Greater Manchester, is charged with 20 counts of unlawfully and maliciously wounding with the intention to do grievous bodily harm. He denies all charges.
Julian Christopher QC, prosecuting, said Mr Paterson was so “experienced and knowledgeable” that the botched operations could not have been “simple mistakes or incompetence”.
He told the jury: “Mr Paterson was a busy surgeon with an excellent bedside manner, who instilled complete confidence in his patients. He was extremely experienced and knowledgeable in his field, which makes what happened in this case all the more extraordinary and outrageous.”
He accused the surgeon of having “exaggerated or quite simply invented risks of cancer” in order to justify car- rying out serious operations on patients that were “quite unnecessary”.
“As a result, those patients and their families lived for many years with the belief that they could be very ill and underwent extensive, life-changing operations for no justifiable reason,” said Mr Christopher.
Mr Paterson operated on thousands of NHS and private patients across the Midlands from 1994 to 2011. He was suspended by the General Medical Council in Oct 2012.
Among his alleged victims was retired GP Rosemary Platt, who went under his knife five times between 1997 and 2001. Despite a mammogram and excision biopsy showing no evidence of cancer, Mr Paterson said she should have surgery because tests might have missed a tumour.
The court also heard that Mr Paterson told a woman who showed no signs of cancer she should have her milk ducts amputated, as not being able to breastfeed was “a small price to pay for her life”. The prosecution said he then hid the results of a scan which showed 25-year-old Leanne Joseph might still be able to breastfeed after surgery. The trial continues. A private hospital group has been fined £20,000 after details of confidential conversations involving IVF patients were found online.
The Information Commissioner’s Office found that an Indian company used by the Lister Hospital in London to transcribe recordings of patients’ conversations stored the audio files and transcripts on an unsecure server.
A spokesman for the hospital said it had apologised to the seven patients affected, would install more checks and would no longer use the Indian firm.