(TW) I've just read something that has shocked me.

[Mav]

Okay TW for anyone who 1) have breast related fears, 2) If you think you're unable to handle news like this because it will set you off into a deeper or worse spiral.

Right, so I was just browsing the net. I came across the Ian Paterson scandle, a surgeon who performed unecessary procedures on paitents.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-40108558

This has truly shocked me, when I go to a medical professional I expect to put all my faith into them. This has upset me alot. Ofcourse this is one out of the millions of medical professionals that we can truly trust, but gosh, this has unsettled me a bit today.

[NervUs]

JUst deleting comment because it was misinformed. Just scanned and didn't see the whole story before commenting :-P

[Mav]

Interesting.

I'm not sure what he did exactly (like how maiming the surgeries were and all that). But, this is a constant conversation we have in the US where health care is very consumer driven and malpractice litigation is pretty common. I am confident that I have gotten unnecessary procedures, and doctors are pretty quick to offer surgical options when less invasive things would do (well documented in obestetrics, gynecology, oncology, and on down the line).

Fascinating to me that this was criminalized in the UK. Not sure it would have been so in the US. Maybe I'm wrong.

I mean, we definitely have cases here of doctors doing grisly things to patients and getting prosecuted. BUt, I'm not sure exaggerating the need for a biopsy would ever be considered an offense in the US. Not even sure it would be considered malpractice.

He lied about it. He said there were cancers when there were not, and how operating on them as quickly (so not waiting for the operation to be funded by the national health care system) as possible would prevent cancers from becoming terminal so his paitents would find the money for him to operate.

[NervUs]

Oh okay, yeah, that would be prosecuted here.

[Catherine S]

Also, his favourite procedure for women with breast cancer was a partial mastectomy, removing very little of the breast because he insisted on ĺeaving as much cleavage intact. That might sound ideal, but the women were devastated to find most of the breast still there after the operation, believing the whole breast was to be removed to stop the cancer from spreading.

One woman was shocked to still see her breast more or less still there and complained, so he reluctantly did the operation again and still only took a small amount of breast tissue away. He was behaving like a plastic surgeon with an ego to match, rather than an oncologist who should have removed the breasts of these women to stop the spread of their cancers. Women died but it can't be proven if their lives were cut short because of his crassness.

ISB x

[MyNameIsTerry]

Sadly, you get rare cases like this.

There was one at my local hospital about a consultant who was incompetent. This one may pop up at some point as 4 patients were scarred by him and about 100 were considering legal action, if i recall rightly but it was a few years back.

The hospital sat on it for 12 months. Action was taken because the local newspaper printed that it cost £500k to pay him on suspension whilst covering his role and the trust were doing nothing with the investigation. Shortly after he resigned. Disgraceful.

I think this is the one:

http://m.stokesentinel.co.uk/sneyd-green-dj-sue-amid-claims-botched-surgery/story-22900405-detail/story.html

These are thankfully rare cases. Just as Shipman shouldn't put us off, or the nurses jailed.

Where there's human beings, you find corruption. You've just got to rationalise it away because it was like this before we were all born.

It is shocking, it should be unthinkable but doctors aren't immune to (thankfully) rare cases of such ar5eholeness! The fact it's rare tells us we can trust them. Treat it as you would the police, some have been sacked and even convicted but you can't let it colour your view of them all.