Surgery blunders hospital tightens checks

New figures obtained by the Yorkshire Post under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that a total of £1,189,054 has been paid by Barnsley Hospital NHS Foundation Trust to 26 women operated on by specialist Puvaneswary Markandoo, who worked at the hospital from February 2005 to October 2008.

The total bill to the NHS, however, will be far higher as the full legal cost of the compensation claims is still yet to be revealed.

A spokesman for Barnsley Hospital NHS Foundation Trust said: “The claimants’ legal costs are currently estimated at £480,000 but we are still waiting for final figures on both the claimants’ and the NHS’ legal costs.”

Ms Markandoo, who earned up to £122,000 a year as a consultant, was suspended on full pay after 35 women complained about problems after their operations.

Many of those patients had suffered breast cancer and were undergoing reconstructive surgery.

In total, 29 women proceeded with claims for compensation and all but three of those have now received an average of £45,733 in damages.

Anne Bassett from Jump, Barnsley, said she was “a physical mess” after being operated on numerous times by Ms Markandoo.

She said: “I was put forward for a reconstruction after I had breast cancer in 2004. It was horrific. I ended up having eight or nine operations because they all went wrong. She left me a physical mess and I’m scarred for life.

“No amount of money will make up for what she did to me. I ended up looking worse than I did when I first had the mastectomy.”

Another women operated on by Ms Markandoo said her experience was “an absolute nightmare”. The grandmother, who asked to remain anonymous, was diagnosed with cancer in 2005. She should have undergone surgery to remove the cancerous lump and had tissue samples taken to see if the cancer had spread but instead Ms Markandoo performed more extensive surgery, involving the removal of lymph nodes.

The mistakes were only discovered after an appeal in 2007 for patients of Ms Markandoo to come forward.

The patient said: “Anyone who has had cancer knows that it turns your world upside down. To find out years after undergoing surgery that much of that treatment was unnecessary is indescribable.

“You put your trust in a hospital and the doctor, believing you are in the best hands and that they will take care of you. To discover that is not what happened at all, it leaves me at a loss.”

In 2008, Ms Markandoo was banned from practising in the private sector when the General Medical Council found her to be deficient in 11 areas of her job including basic and specialist surgery, arranging treatment and working within laws and regulations.

However, the GMC ruled that she was still permitted to work in the NHS under a number of conditions, such as supervision and retraining.

A spokesman for Barnsley Hospital NHS Foundation Trust said the recruitment process for consultants had been “substantially altered” since Ms Markandoo left and added: “Prospective candidates are now taken through a rigorous technical interview by a Royal College representative, divisional director and speciality consultant which includes scrutiny of training portfolios, a practical test and identification of any gaps in training experience.

“As well as making changes to how we recruit, we have worked hard to improve the service and learned this month that the hospital has been given a higher than average score by patients for their satisfaction with the hospital’s mastectomy and breast reconstruction consultant surgeons.”