Surgeon ‘could have hundreds, if not thousands of other victims’

A surgeon convicted of wounding patients with unnecessary operations could have “hundreds, if not thousands” of other victims, a leading solicitor has said as she compared the case to the Mid Staffordshire scandal.

Ian Paterson, 59, lied to his victims, exaggerating or inventing the risk of cancer to carry out procedures, his trial was told.

But while the jury at Nottingham Crown Court was only told of 10 alleged victims treated in the private sector, dozens of women have already received payouts for treatment after settling civil claims.

Emma Doughty, clinical negligence solicitor for Slater and Gordon, said the true number of Paterson’s victims was hard to gauge.

She told the Press Association: “Although we have seen hundreds of claimants, God knows how many this actually affects.

“There are hundreds if not thousands of claimants (between various law firms) and then we have got to think about people who haven’t come forward, people who have died and so on. It’s on a huge scale.”

More than 700 patients were recalled by the hospitals where Paterson worked as part of a review in 2013, including 553 treated on the NHS.

Ms Doughty compared the case of Paterson to the Mid Staffordshire scandal in which hundreds of patients are believed to have died because of poor care, with the truth not coming to light for years.

She said: “I would say, from our standpoint and what we know, there have been cover-ups since the late 90s.

“We have settled around 60-70 cases against the NHS, 10 where the treatment was in the private sector and we have 35 still to settle.

“It has been really intensive, there are so many issues and I would say that as more and more comes out every day and the more I see, the more worrying it becomes.”

Ms Doughty said the guilty verdicts may help “focus minds” on settling outstanding cases as quickly as possible.

Among those who have pursued a case is 28-year-old Jade Edgington, from Shirley, West Midlands, who underwent unnecessary operations to remove lumps from her breasts.

She was 16 when she discovered a “quite big” lump in her breast while showering and was referred to Paterson at the Spire Parkway Hospital in Solihull.

He decided to remove the lump, which was the size of a golf ball, in October 2005 and she underwent further operations in December 2006 and April 2007 following the discovery of more lumps.

Two years after her last procedure, she went under the knife again in April 2009 for a small lump in a scar left from a previous operation.

It was only in 2011 that she was told the procedures were unnecessary.

She said: “Naturally as a person that hasn’t been through it, you would think ‘oh God’ and you would want to question everything.

“But I have had to have medical care since then and to be honest, you’re put in a situation where you really have to trust the person that you’re dealing with.

“It’s really weird thinking about it from a ‘better safe than sorry’ perspective now knowing everything that I do.”

Ms Edgington, who works in financial services, said Paterson did not carry out biopsies on the lumps and she was told “we need to get it out”.

She said: “When you’re 16 sitting in a big room with some big high-flying surgeon who says we need to get it out, you just go ‘yeah, we do need to get it out’.”

Ms Edgington, who is being represented by Slater and Gordon, was recalled and was told by another doctor he would have kept the first lump under review and he would not have considered carrying out three of the operations.

She said: “That’s when it became apparent that actually what happened didn’t need to happen.

“You are never going to get away from having to put your trust in someone.

“You go to the dentist, you put your trust in the dentist, you go into Vodafone and you buy a phone and you buy it from someone who you think knows what they are doing.

“You’re constantly having to trust people who you are going to see, these experts in whatever walk of life.”

She said that her past experiences would make her more cautious in future, adding: “If someone said to me something very drastic I’d want a second opinion but you still trust in what’s being told.

“For me, that’s why it’s so important that the people who regulate this kind of stuff take some responsibility and that – hopefully – one of the repercussions of the trial is that there are more regulations in place.

“We have no choice but to trust these people who are apparent experts.”

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