A Bristol-trained surgeon was able to wound hundreds of women due to a "culture of avoidance and denial" among staff, a damning report has found.
Ian Paterson, who graduated from the University of Bristol, was jailed in 2017 for carrying out needless operations on his patients in the West Midlands between 1997 and 2011.
The 59-year-old surgeon duped his patients at NHS and private hospitals into believing they could be seriously ill before convincing them to go under the knife, Mirror Online reports.
An independent inquiry into his malpractice said he was able to perform botched surgery on hundreds of patients because of a "dysfunctional" healthcare system.
Retired Bishop of Norwich Graham James, who chaired the inquiry, said yesterday (February 4) that more than 750 patients were let down by both the NHS and independent providers.
He said: “Our report finds that patients were let down over many years by multiple individual and organisational failures.
“There was a culture of avoidance and denial, an alarming loss of corporate memory and an offloading of responsibility at every level.
“Patients were initially let down by Paterson when he performed inappropriate or unnecessary procedures and operations and they were let down both by the NHS and independent providers who failed to supervise him appropriately and did not respond correctly to well-evidenced complaints about his practice.
“Once action was finally taken, patients were again let down by wholly inadequate recall procedures in both the NHS and the private sector.
“When patients complained to regulators they were frequently treated with disdain.
“Finally, they were let down by a discretionary indemnity system that avoided giving compensation to Paterson patients once it was clear his malpractice was criminal."
Asked how many patients might have been affected by his malpractice, the bishop said it could "certainly" be more than 1,000.
He said: "All I can do is give you the overall figure of those whom he treated.
"Of course, in many cases they have not been recalled and individuals investigated, so that figure is not available with any degree of accuracy."
The report made a number of recommendations including making it standard practice for consultants to write directly to patients to explain proposed surgical treatment.
